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i Observations of a | 

i Retired Veteran | 

5 HENRY C. TINSLEY j 

I I 




Qass. 



?Sa67^ 



Book 



Observations of a 
Retired Veteran 



By Henry C. Tinsley 

("P. Boyzy") 




ALBERT SHULTZ 

Staunton, Va. 

1904 



< 






Introdudion, 




HE essays contained in this little book 
comprise a selec5\ion from many of a like 
charad^er which were contributed at 
intervals through a series of years to the 
columns of the Vindicator, a weekly newspaper 
of Staunton, Virginia, by its editor, the late 
Henry C. Tinsley, under the pen-name of **P. 
Boyzy." The perusal of them in their present 
form will serve to confirm the opinion of those 
who read them as they then appeared, that they 
possess in marked degree the unusual quality of 
a winning humor coupled "with the pathos that 
is often humor's most exquisite accompaniment; 
and that they combine a shrewd if homely Tvit 
w^ith a profound knowledge of the workings of 
the human heart. 

Cin the more strenuous life of political journal- 
ism, to which Mr. Tinsley devoted his energies 
from the time when he laid down his arms at 
the close of the War between the States to the 
beginning of his last lingering illness, these 
" Observations'* were for him but an inadequate 
outlet for the expression of the courageous and 
hopeful philosophy which was always his dis- 
tinguishing chara<5^eristic. To cover his pain 
with a jest, — to preach without cant the gospel 
of love, — to do the best that he could do accord- 



ing to the lights before him — these generous 
motives and high purposes are to be read be- 
tween the lines by those who knew him as 
legibly as if they shone out in words upon the 
printed page. 

C During his lifetime he was frequently asked to 
gather into book form these little essays which 
had delighted so many of the readers of his 
newspaper; but to all such requests he smilingly 
turned a deaf ear. His innate modesty esteemed 
their value at far below their real worth. They 
are given here just as they were written by him 
and printed in the Vindicator, without change 
or corre<5tion other than of typography. It goes 
without saying that if their author might have 
revised them with a view to their publication in 
a permanent form, there would probably have 
been many changes ; but it is believed that as 
they came warm from heart and brain, they will 
serve to reproduce him most vividly for those 
who knew him best and to illustrate once more 
for them in all its dignity and sweetness the 
simple courage of his life. 

C It is for such friends that this book is 
published. 

Armistead C. Gordon. 
Staunton, Virginia. 

0<5\ober, 1904. 



f 

Ml 



Biographical Sketch. 




ENRY C. TINSLEY was born April 7, 
1834, in Richmond, Virginia, and lived 
on the corner of Franklin and Governor 
streets, in his father's residence, which 
was opposite the old Whig office. His 
father was a native of Ireland and died at the 
early age of 28, the day after the birth of his only 
daughter, Ella, who was educated at the Virginia 
Female Institute in Staunton, while presided 
over by the Rev. Dr. Phillips. She and his 
mother have since died, and it is not believed 
that he has at this time any living relative. 
CMr. Tinsley's education was obtained at the 
old Richmond Academy of that city, a classical 
school. In his 18th year he began his journalis- 
tic career as a reporter for the Richmond 
Dispatch, in which profession of his choice he 
soon attracfled attention. 

CThe war coming on, he enlisted in the Rich- 
mond Howitzers and served during the w^hole 
war as a faithful and brave soldier. 
C After the war he returned to the Richmond 
Dispatch and soon became one of the most 
valued men upon its working corps. 
C Early in the '70's he became by purchase, half 
owner and editor of the Staunton Vindicator, 
being associated with the late ^W, H. H. Lynn 
until 1876 when Mr. Lynn sold his interest to 
Capt T. C. Morton. The paper was then for 
eight years condu(5\ed under the style of Tinsley 
& Morton. After this Capt. Morton retired from 
the paper and his eldest son, A. S. Morton, 
became in turn half owner, the firm continuing 
as before until 1895 when it was dissolved, Mr. 
R. S. Turk purchasing the office and good will 
of the Vindicator and consolidating it with the 
Spectator, since which time it has been known 
as the Staunton SPECTATOR and VINDICATOR, 
Mr. Tinsley retiring from the paper of "which he 
had been chief editor for tw^enty-four years. 
C Mr. Tinsley died in Staunton, after a long and 
painful illness, August 21, 1902. 



Observations of a Retired Ueteran 
I 



<if$(i$ieir0atfQn$ of i^ ^^Ut^i mttt^vmt 



SAW the Sweet Harbinger of Spring last 
week. A violet ? No. A sw^allow ? No. 
A bud ? No. Ah ! no ; put up your 
encyclopedia of Spring information and 
I'll tell you. It was the annual boy with 
his shoes off for the first time since the w^arm 
w^eather. He stepped gingerly ; he stood still 
longer than usual ; he hoisted the bottom of his 
foot for inspection often ; he let a cat go by, 
though a rock lay in a yard of him; he picked 
out a velvety place on the tan-bark sidewalk be- 
fore he put his feet firmly down and squared 
himself on them to give the two-finger whistle 
for his chum, which is the terror to the nervous. 
Much of the boy had gone out of him. He 
moved with the motion and sloth of decrepit 
age. Next week you will not know him for the 
same boy. His feet will be hardened, he will 
dance over the macadamized streets with the 
callosity of a stone-crusher, and the fugacious 
cat will be lucky if it gets its tail through the 
fence in time. The mourner's bench humility ot 
to-day will have changed to the noisy glee of the 
hardened criminal. His baseball practice will 
pervade the middle of every street, and his large 
and assorted stock of general trouble and an- 
noyance will be displayed under all our noses 
w^ith the request that we w^ill call and examine 
before purchasing elsewhere. I cannot under- 
stand how any man can be indifferent to the 
blessings of the church, when he remembers 
that one of them is the Sunday School — invented 
by the Fathers as an ingenious and effective 
place of torment for this Boy. Through the 
week he is intolerable, but the blessed Sabbath 
is to him a day of retribution. It is the awful 
day when his ears are washed and touseled 
about ; when his eyes are punched out by the 
towelled but unsparing hand of a Christian 
mother ; when his shoes are put back on him 
for a day, and when, with a neck encircled by a 
collar starched to maddening stiffness, and with 



<!^(E$eirtiation$ of ^a IS^tit^i 19^tetan 



a pocket handkerchief the consistency of paste- 
board, he is sent to the place of punishment. I 
have read many beautiful poems about the sweet 
quiet of the Sabbath, but few of the poets have 
given the right solution of it. It is because all 
over the civilized world on that day, millions of 
Boys have been captured and corraled in Sunday 
schools. The very church bells understand it, 
and in the early hours ring out triumphantly, 
** Got-'em-in-here ! Got-'em-in-here ! " 

moo 

COf course, as we move on through this alter- 
nately delightful and disagreeable world, we 
must be brought face to face with bores of many 
varieties. Setting aside that pest, the egotist, 
for whom there can be no excuse, I should like 
to mention the man or woman w^ho conceives 
that the way to talk about books is to deal with 
the a(5^s and characters instead of what they say. 
It seems to me that it is just one of the modes, 
if I may call it that, of talking literature that is 
little better than no mode at all. It is a rare 
thing to meet with even the most modern work — 
I am speaking of ficftion — by a fairly successful 
writer, that does not contain some utterance to 
arouse thought and challenge us to mental de- 
bate. The ac5ts must of necessity be common- 
place from familiarity, for man has behaved 
himself for a million of years from the same 
motives and only varied his manner with the 
advancing material circumstances which sur- 
rounded him. But his thoughts are not obliged 
to be commonplace. The thoughts of men are 
marching in ever moving procession towards the 
Light, and as each one emerges from the dark- 
ness it catches on its forehead a ray which trans- 
forms it. It is these that are to be discussed 
when we talk about books, and not the mere ad^s 
of the ac5\ors therein. What, as a matter of con- 
versation, is the suicide of Dido, compared with 
the fine lines in which she so touchingly sum- 



<!9b$eriiiitions of a Hetireft ^i^t^ran 



marizes what her life would have been had the 
false ^neas never seen her? I lately heard two 
exceptionally intelligent young people discussing 
the novel — Put Yourself in His Place — which 
though a very second rate work was written 
with a very first rate purpose. Their criticism 
and discussion was confined wholly to the a(5tion 
of the charad^ers and they seemed to have 
thought the purpose of no account compared 
with the plot and love-making. And it is not 
young people alone who are given to this skim- 
ming process. I have known people who really 
deserved the title of readers, to find their chief 
if not their only criticism in the decision of how 
well this or that chara(5\er was drawn, and what 
surprises the plot contained ; while as to the 
thoughts, good or bad, old or novel, the critics 
seemed to be oblivious. If we expedt really to 
improve ourselves by books ~ still I am speaking 
of fi(5^ion — we should try to remember and after- 
wards discuss the thoughts they contained and 
which we found in the mouths of the chara(5lers 
or in the comments of the author. There has 
never been in my recollection a time when the 
fi(5\ion of the day was more completely abreast 
of the advancing thought of the world, or in 
which it teemed with more new and prad^ical 
views logically conne(5ted with passing events 
and new situations. It is when, closing the 
book, we take away with us those seeds and 
subje(5\ them to the attrition of discussion, 
which wears off the pollen, that we arrive at, 
possibly, a new and valuable thought which may 
deserve the name of knowledge. 

a s a 

C*' It seems to me your observations are nothing 
but opinions," said Mrs. Boyzy to me the other 
evening. She called it o-pin-ions. ^Vomen have 
an art of expressing contempt by syllabic em- 
phasis that men never acquire. It is their failure 
to accomplish this that induces men to substi- 
tute profanity. Nevertheless, as that excellent 

10 



<9b$eiriiati0n$ of a Betir^d Q^t^tan 



woman remarked, the things I say in these pa- 
pers are for the most part opinions. But what 
of that ; what moves the world but opinions — 
what has moved it up to where it is now, but 
opinions ? Where would the world be if it were 
not for new opinions ; where would men be ? 
Suppose every public man clung to precedents 
in public affairs ; every politician pinned his 
faith on his party policy, and every preacher 
planted himself on orthodoxy — all with a deter- 
mination to go no further. The world would 
come to a standstill. There would be no pro- 
gress. Opinions are the lever that works the 
world. Precedents become mouldy, politicians 
change with the times, and creeds advance with 
the public thought. What do we care what a 
man thought two hundred years ago, when w^e 
have what a man thinks to-day? What is to us 
the policy of a political party when the moss has 
commenced to grow over it. Who would at- 
tempt to enforce in this day the mediaeval creeds 
and religious practices and church government ? 
What are we put here for, if it is not to learn, 
every year, every day, every hour if we can. 
And of w^hat use is all this learning if we are not 
to advance by means of it? And how could we 
move a step if we did not tell our neighbor 
what we think we have learned — that is, tell 
him our opinions. I say to you. Madam (and I 
say it the more freely that she is out of hearing), 
that opinions rule the world, and while it may 
be possible that mine do not rule my own house- 
hold, it impairs their value no more than im- 
prisonment and persecution did those of other 
philosophers in the past. An opinion is a valu- 
able thing — in its information if it is true, in the 
mental exercise it gives in combating it, if it is 
error, and in any event as a feather that indicates 
which way the wind is blowing — in what direc- 
tion the blind mole of man's finite judgment is 
groping around its prison in search of an outlet 
to the infinite. And that is true. Madam, whether 
you call them opinions, or o-pin-ions ! 

IX 



Ob$er<)ation$ of a Retired Ueteran 
II 




i^b^^tnaUnns of a B^tired ^^teran 



OU have been to the Conference ? So 
have I, but it was twelve years ago. 
Still I shall never forget a scene I wit- 
nessed there. It was in the same Meth- 
odist church that this one is being held 
in. For days I had been interested in a plain, 
homely-faced minister, considerably past his 
half century, who came in evidently with great 
pain on crutches. The town bell striking the 
hour was not more puncftual than the sound of 
his crutches. His hands were distorted by rheu- 
matism, his limbs twisted, and his face had a 
patient look as of one who had suffered for a 
hundred years. His face was rough, but some- 
where about its expression there was a gracious- 
ness that attracfted my attention. One other 
expression in it struck me ; it was the air of a 
man who had finished his work. Not that he 
hadn't frequent consultations with the ministers 
who approached him, or showed any lack of in- 
terest in what was going on, but just a look as 
if he was doing anything for the last time. Once 
he got up and made an official report of some kind 
to the Bishop. As he closed it, his eyes burned 
with an intense anxiety and he opened his lips 
as if to say something. But it was left unsaid, 
and as he painfully resumed his seat the old 
look returned. As the close of the Conference 
approached, I saw him several times with his 
head bent over the back of the pew. It was on 
an evening very near the close. The rays of the 
westering March sun shone through the win- 
dows with a cold, cheerless light. His name 
was called. He raised his head. His face was 
flushed. He struggled to his feet and with his 
crutches hobbled around the aisle to the front 
of the pulpit, where he stood, balancing himself 
on his crutches. And then the story came out. 
It was told to those in the seats rather than to 
the Bishop. He had entered the ministry young 
and had hoped to give his whole life to God. 
But of late years disease had overtaken him. 

14 



I^bsernations of a Bettried IBeteran 



He had struggled against it and tried to do his 
duty through great suffering, but lately he had 
found that he could be of no further use and he 
asked — here he paused and turned from the pews 
to the Bishop. It seemed that he was about to 
say something that he had striven for years not 
to say. His eyes filled and in a thick voice he 
said: **I ask to be put on the superannuated 
list. " And then he sat down on the nearest seat 
and wept like a child. What it would have 
broken the heart of other men to have staid in, 
it broke his heart to leave. I viewed him with 
intense curiosity. Five or six of his brother 
ministers came up one by one, and silently took 
hold of his twisted hands. I don't think they 
said a word ; I am sure he did not. He did not 
look at them, for his head was buried on one of 
his cheap, home-made crutches, and from his 
pocket he had taken a w^orn and faded hand- 
kerchief, with which he was checking his tears. 
After he had gotten back to his pew, some minis- 
ters here and there over the audience got up 
and testified to what the man had been and what 
work he had done. Some of them had seen him, 
crippled as he was and suffering the agony of 
rheumatism, driving miles through the falling 
snow to fill an appointment to preach. Some- 
how it seemed to me a eulogy of the dead — and 
it was. When I saw him the next morning he 
had the air of a man who had met a great loss, 
instead of a man who had just parted with a life 
of labor and physical anguish, but there was 
still the last time look about him. And it was 
the last time. In six months from that time he 
was dead. What shall we say when such a life 
of self-sacrifice passes on to the stars ? What 
can we say, except to speculate on the boundless 
possibilities that eternity must contain for such 
a life. What must such a little minute-hand 
life as sixty years, develop into on the dial plate 
of eternity, when it is begun as this man's was. 
Such a man as this, it seems to me, must at 

15 



C^bsiemations of a Betir^d ^et^ran 



some time or other have touched the very hem 
of the Master's garment. 



Cl sa'w in your paper this week an expression 
which continues to run through my head. It is 
an advertisement of a poultryman for poultry, in 
which he says with rough frankness, *'01d 
roosters not wanted." Whether it is good policy 
in him, while attempting to secure tender and 
succulent birds for the clerical stomach, to 
affront that venerable class of fowls upon which 
we sinners are to live long after the clergy have 
left, I will not say. I do not believe, however, 
that it will go unresented or unpunished. I be- 
lieve that many an old rooster will so beplume 
himself and take on such an extra strut, that he 
will at last succeed in forcing himself as a young 
bird between the teeth of our clerical visitors. 
This will be a sweet revenge. But with this I 
have nothing to do ; what I have now to do with, 
is the fact that over every department of life I 
see the same announcement. In society where 
the sweet amenities of life are monopolized by 
the young, the aged beau is met by the flaming 
inscription, "Old roosters not wanted." In 
politics we hear the cry that the favorite candi- 
date is a representative of the "Young Demo- 
cracy" or "Young Republicans," as the case 
may be, and that, except at the ballot-box, "Old 
roosters are not wanted. " If a congregation 
loses its pastor and commences looking around 
for a successor, the first thing it does is to print 
in large letters across the pulpit, "Old roosters 
not wanted. " Across the door of every new 
enterprise is the same inscription. What, I 
desire to know, is to become of us old roosters ? 
Not fit for broiling, too tough for roasting, too 
old for congressmen, for preachers — what are 
you going to do with us ? Ah, the very question 
shows where we stand. It used to be a few 
years ago, what we were going to do with you, 

16 



(f^bsi^rtiations of i^ Hetired ISi^teiri^n 



but the tables have been turned and now it seems 
to me that the cemetery gate is the only place 
not decorated with the legend, " Old roosters 
not wanted. " There they are more than wel- 
come ; indeed, if it were not for their patronage 
that institution would do an amount of business 
very unsatisfactory to its stockholders. Having 
then this refuge, brethren, let us take courage ! 
Let us take consolation in the thought that w^e 
have gotten over so much of the rough road over 
which those following us have yet to travel, and 
that having once passed that portal we shall 
have reached perfe(5\ peace. Let us find a spite- 
ful satisfacTtion in the fa(5t that long after we 
have entered the silent gates, the young roosters 
will still have to rise early and crow hungrily 
for corn, still will have to skirmish with other 
roosters for bread, and the highest pole in the 
roost, and that as they show up in the race of 
life, they will have to read, in their turn, the 
fatal sign-board along the track — '* Old roosters 
not wanted. " 




17 



Observations of a Retired Ueteran 
III 



#b$ettiations of a JSetir^d Veteran 



HAVE often heard people lament ill-health 
because, they say, sickness loses to a man 
friends. On the contrary, I hold that it 
brings him many new and unexpec5\ed 

ones. Let me see — December 15, 

July ; seven months ; that was long enough to 
make the experiment, wasn't it? Well, let me 
look over some of the new friends I have made 
lying all this time in bed. The first new friend 
that I made, and one who had evidently seen 
better days, was a Tomato Can, that ever present 
denizen of the back-yard. On his head he 
jauntily flew a cocked hat bearing a damaged 
new pi(5ture of himself evidently taken in youth, 
and across his red waistcoat, in blue letters, was 
the word ** Trophy. " There he stood, day after 
day, leaning jauntily against the doubtful com- 
pany of a whiskey barrel hoop, telling me the 
time of day, as if that was his only business in 
life. If the sun's light lay across his red stomach 
it w^as 9 o'clock, if it glistened on his cocked hat 
it was noon, and if it soberly lighted up the 
cherry red tomato on his side, it was 6 o'clock. 
**Sir," he seemed to say, "I have not been 
always as you see me. I have seen the day 
when I roosted on the highest shelf in the family 
grocery, and when I was dusted daily by well 
dressed clerks — if the employer was around. I 
was for many years the tenant of a French plate 
glass w^indow and I have been carried by the soft 
hand of Beauty, sir, and laid gently in the 
market-basket. I do not boast, but Beauty itself 
has carried me through the streets in its arm. I 
have seen great larks, sir. I have travelled that 
Main Street at the rate of a mile a minute at the 
tail of valuable dogs, and at the midnight hour I 
have bounced into the midst of cat caucuses with 
great sport. I have been the friend of Man, sir, 
but what has Man done for me. He has left me 
here in this miserable back-yard, company of 
barrel-hoops and brick-bats and bottles. He 
has — " But here the next door neighbor's ser- 

20 



^bsctnaUons of n Betttied Veteran 



vant threw a bucket of slop-"water on my friend 
and cut off his complaint. His red vest peeled 
down a little further, his cocked hat depressed 
further over his face, and a potato skin stopped 
his mouth. How true it is that no person can be 
in such disreputable circumstances that he has 
not the remembrance of better days to soothe 
him, and like the Tomato Can, ever find true 
comfort in the top-shelf on which he long ago 
may have roosted. 

Q O O 

C But as a new friend, the Street must always 
take the first place with a sick man. How new 
everything in the Street becomes to the man who 
views it from a sick bed ! You would think he 
had never seen it before. Nor has he. No man 
in health lies and sees the Street wake up in the 
morning. Nor does the man in health, walking 
about the Street, see how prettily it goes to 
sleep. The lengthening shadows make it drowsy 
for a little while, but as evening comes it makes 
a great stir. It sends hundreds of hustling people 
along its walks hurrying home. It lights up 
hundreds of windows and shop fronts and looks 
as much as to say, " I think I will make a night 
of it. I've sent all the children to bed and now 
I'll have a time of it." But the steady old Street 
on which I live gives up its dissipated idea early, 
turns off light after light, and soon the lonely 
sidewalks are without a passenger. The Street 
does one thing for the sick man you v^ouldn't 
cxpe<5\ ; it arouses a spirit of rebellion that is 
astonishing. Resignation is a beautiful virtue, 
but it chiefly exists on side streets and out of 
town. The man who is sick on a main street 
and professes to be resigned is a hypocrite. My 
friend, the Street, presents to me Thompson. 
What do I say? **Ah, Thompson, take the 
blessing of a sick man ? " Not a bit of it. I say, 
what right has Thompson to be walking along 
attending to business and possibly taking sur- 

21 



^b$eniation$ of a B^tir^ft Veteran 



reptitious cooling drinks, while I am doomed to 
staring out of the window and drinking beef tea ? 
But Thompson don't drink ? Oh, well, what do 
I care if he don't ! I threw that in about drinks 
to make it as hard on him as possible. It makes 
a good point on a man just to suggest it. There ; 
there goes Robinson going to church with a new 
suit on, and a wife hanging on his arm ! What 
has he done to deserve that sort of luck ? Why, 
isn't he up here fiat of his back — and there they 
all go. Resigned? Ah, no, the sick are not 
resigned. It is only the dead who are resigned. 



C A perfe<5tly new friend is the Sky. How often 
does one in health look at the Sky save to see 
about the weather? But once a year. But in 
sickness it is an ever present friend. You watch 
for day breaks in it, and for the fading stars, and 
find an exciting interest in which of two stars 
will go out first, something like you were betting 
on a race. And then the figures in the blue field 
all day long ; for it is not at evening and night 
alone that they appear. What have I not seen 
march across my "window in the procession — a 
castle, a fan, a swan, a kerosene can, the king of 
spades, a cream jug, troops of angels, in short, 
anything that an idle imagination wants to con- 
jure up. And when it dresses for the evening, 
in what glorious costumes does it appear. But 
all that is garish compared with the Sky upon 
which the night has settled down. That is the 
sort of Sky to bring calmness and content. The 
quiet lighting up of the stars, with no step lad- 
ders and no hurried match scratching of the 
police ; the ease with ^vhich the moon climbs up 
her route, no puffing, no machinery clanking ; 
the deepening of the blue to better show the 
celestial sparks that glow on it — and the knowl- 
edge that all this will go on without failure and 
without your having to turn over in bed to work 
some lever to help it move, makes the coming of 

22 



(dbsierndtions al a Betiteft Veteran 



night a comfort to the sick. Who thinks of the 
stars in health ? No one. We think of supper, of 
the theatre, of the band concert, of the church, 
of the le(5\ure — but who thinks of the stars they 
are walking under. It is given to the sick to 
remember them, and in return they remember 
the sick. Whoever else fails us the Stars are 
there. Steady, faithful, unchanging, always 
waiting. Shall I remember them after this? 
Ah, I can't tell, I am like the rest and will soon 
forget them in the busy street. But to-night 
while all is still, I look with reverence and curi- 
osity on our future homes, my newest friends, 
the Stars. 



CL Another new friend is the News Gatherer. I 
give you my word that one sick man gets more 
news — political, gossip, scandal — than any 
twenty well ones. You see he is always there 
and easy to find. Human nature can't keep news 
long and it always hunts up the man that is 
easy to find and unloads on him. There is a 
sense of security in talking to a man flat of his 
back — he can't get out to repeat it. Many things 
combine to make the News Gatherer the sick 
man's friend. He is helpless, weak and can't 
talk back. That secures a good listener. He is 
sick and wants to be entertained. That makes 
him an eager listener. And finally being confined 
and unable to get out he is presumably an empty 
vessel waiting to be filled. And with this inviting 
prospecSl the News Gatherer moves his machine 
up to the side of the bed and monotonously pumps, 
pumps, pumps. It is well for that kindly hearted 
man that the patient is not only stretched out on 
his bed, but also unarmed. Ah ! how many men 
earn sudden death and yet in the mystery of 
Providence escape it ! I have often wondered at 
the persistency with "which habit has fixed on 
women the exclusive reputation of gossipers. 
For I say unto you, brethren, that Woman, who 

23 



O^b^^rxtations of a Betined ^H^van 



with empty head and silly tongue toys with her 
neighbor's chara<5ter unto its destru<5\ion, is not 
more full of gossip than her brother Man, who 
knows better and yet cannot stand the tempta- 
tion of a sick man and a safe chance to chatter 
about matters with which he has no business. I 
am afraid like the idea of original sin we all have 
just a little spice of it. 



CA relief to this friend, and a friend I never saw 
before, w^as my Moth. I think he came into the 
world about February, having been deceived by 
the hot room into the belief that Spring had 
come. Many days after, when snow could be 
seen on the ground, I have seen him feebly 
climbing up the window pane and looking out 
with the air of one 'whose whole life had been a 
dreadful mistake. The first time I saw him was 
one night sitting in the light and heat of the 
lamp, his grey "wing shining like silver and his 
brown little body giving a soft, velvety light, 
his face grave with owl-like stupidity, and two 
big black eyes. After the snow passed away he 
seemed to get settled, and at night would sit on 
a match-box staring for hours at the lamp, as 
one who should say, ** Well, I understand the 
medicine vials, and the blisters, and the ink- 
stand, and all that, but this great bright thing is 
quite beyond me. " He never once thought of 
flying into it to see how it w^as done, and I 
thought of writing to the Bug Professor at the 
Smithsonian that here was a species of moth that 
light did not attra<5\. But what will not bad 
company do ? After the warm weather came and 
the windows were open, what should come in 
but other moths, of little charac5\er I think, who 
commenced pranks of humming and buzzing and 
butting the lamp. My Moth watched it with 
deep interest for two nights, but on the second 
night, I saw from his rubbing his nose with his 
paws that he was getting excited. Sure enough 

24 



<!f^b$erti^tion$ of a K^tir^d ^eti^ran 



on the third night he remarked, ** Well, I guess 
rU try a little of that myself, '* aad hopping back 
to the mucilage bottle for a start he took a header 
at the lamp. Except that his silver ^vings trem- 
bled, and his velvet legs drew up, he never 
moved again. I had lost a good friend whose 
innocent ramblings I had watched for hours 
and 'whose antics, when he tasted the ink or got 
a sniff of the ammonia, had much amused me. 
I don't know that he died too early. He had 
learned a bad habit, and for a man or a Bug who 
has learned a bad habit, I am not certain that 
death can come too soon. He died thinking he 
knew everything worth knowing, for I have no 
doubt that through the panes of my window^ and 
across my narrow street he thought he had seen 
the World. Just as w^e larger, but not w^iser 
animals think that after gazing through our 
little theological panes, we have seen clear 
through Eternity, and into the mind of the 
Father. After all, my Moth was not worse off 
than the rest of us. We have all our little 
streets which we call the World, and our little 
pane of glass through which we think we see 
all that is worth seeing, and we need but a 
soupcon of bad example to make us blindly dash 
into the worst of follies. Lret us never forget 
that, more than for this Moth, there is for us an 
unseen Hand that after these follies picks us up 
and starts us on our course again, w^ith a pitying 
touch, and that, more than this, w^hen the last 
twilight of evening shall gather around us, and 
the hands of those we love can be no longer 
seen, there shall appear to us through the gray 
mist of Death, that bright and gentle Hand, and 
with it the face of a Father and a Friend. 



25 



Observations of a Retired Ueteran 

IV 



<|^b$eiriiatfon$ of a l^etir^d ISieterdn 



■ MUST tell you of the Major's Last Loye. 
I had thought I would leave it in my note 
book, but a letter, which I can only read 
through a mist of tears, has changed my 

mind. 
C Strolling out as the sun was setting, on the 
first evening of my stay at a village hotel last 
summer, I saw two shadows cast across the 
street ; one so very long, and one so very short, 
as to look ridiculous. They were the shadows 
of the Major and his Last Love. The Major, 
hatless, was swinging musingly the torn straw 
hat of his love, while the little three-year-old 
lady herself was struggling along with the 
Major's hat piled with flowers and toys and tea- 
cups on her return from having '*a party" on 
the river edge. The little feet stumbled, the 
party crockery flew, and the two shadows melted 
in one as the prattling owner and the tall Major 
knelt together to gather them up. That was my 
first sight of the Major and his love. 
Cl cannot say that any of us knew, or came to 
know, all about the Major ; always excepting 
that we loved him. He w^as tall, straight, and 
frost-haired. His regular features w^ere of that 
sort that might have belonged to a man of forty- 
five or a man of sixty, and he was a changeable 
sort of a person who one day would look one 
age and the next another. Of his means, we 
knew absolutely nothing. It was said that his 
wealth had been carried away by the civil war 
and that he was living on a small but sufficient 
remainder, which was doubtless true. Over his 
gray moustache there was a blue eye that some- 
times looked as it might belong to a boy of 
eighteen and sometimes had the weary look of a 
man long acquainted with grief. His skin was 
as soft as a woman's and often suffused with a 
faint blush which would have better become a 
woman. He was the very spirit of gentleness 
to both men and women, and it seemed hard to 
realize, looking at him, that, as we heard after- 

28 



<9b$^irtiat{on$ of ia Kettted ^etemn 



wards, this man had been wounded and captured 
in a battle and set apart to be executed in 
reprisal. We did not learn that from him, for 
he never talked about himself, but from an old 
army comrade who met him and was the only 
man that we boarders ever saw the Major fami- 
liar with. Not that he was distant, but after a 
gentle smile of salutation or recognition he never 
seemed anxious to converse, and like most men, 
silence gave him an air of mystery. There were 
many solutions of the mystery by the lady 
boarders, particularly by Mrs. Pointlace, a rest- 
less little widow, who was never at peace unless 
she was in love with somebody or somebody was 
in love with her. Her theory was that the Major 
had suffered, at some period or other, a great 
shock to his affections — a supposition that failed 
to find confirraation in the regular appetite and 
the eccentric neatness of the person who had 
received the shock. Whether the lady's theory 
was correc5^ or not, none of us had an opportunity 
to know, for we would as soon have expe<5ted 
to see the Major come into the dining-room 
without his coat as to have heard him speak of 
his personal affairs. The widow^ was a new 
boarder ; if she had been there as long as the 
rest of us she would have known that whatever 
he might have suffered in the past, the Major's 
heart was now full to the brim of affec5\ion for a 
female, and that female not longer than his arm. 
CShe couldn't have been over three years old, 
and was the only girl among four boys, running 
up like stair steps. I can see her now under a 
broad summer hat that would have covered the 
top of a barrel. The crown had given away and 
her little blue eyes would be oftener looking out 
through the gap than from under the brim. Her 
stockings were never both tied up at the same 
time, except when her mother turned her over, 
fresh dressed, in the morning to the Major, or 
when she put on her "tose" in the evening 
to walk with him. How the Major had gotten 

29 



IdbseTttations of a Ketiteft IBi^teran 



such possession of her, I think even her father 
and mother hardly knew, but certain it was that 
she had become his personal property. They 
went the rounds of the town stores every day, 
and took long walks from which the little lady 
always came back tired and asleep in the arms 
of the '*Mady, " as she called him. I suppose 
sometimes the Major had carried her for miles, 
and he would mount the steps of the hotel 
veranda in those sultry days, mopping his face 
wet from fatigue. And then he would unload his 
pockets of all the shells and rocks and sticks and 
strings that the little one had gathered in the 
waking part of her walk, and put them away for 
her carefully. One day the usual load had a 
marked variety in the shape of a large water- 
melon and three kittens. In managing all of 
which the little lady was assisting by bringing 
one kitten tail foremost under each arm. Much 
time w^as spent by the little tyrant in diretfting 
the Major as to where each article of that remark- 
able load was to go. If she had become [the 
Major's property, I think I may say that the 
Major had also become her property. I think 
that on rainy days from his vest to his heels, the 
Major's clothing was marked with little muddy 
foot prints ; that his hat was used as a carryall 
for all manner of toys and sweetmeats ; that his 
watch was demanded at all hours of the day to 
see if it was '* bekfus time" yet, and that his 
cane served as an Arab steed for races around the 
porch without limit. The "Mady" and all he 
had were the undisturbed possession of the little 
one. 

€Llt was the close of the summer that, one 
morning, the little one did not appear. She was 
sick of fever, they said. At breakfast, the Major 
looked disturbed. But in a hotel we are not apt 
to think seriously of the troubles of our neigh- 
bors, even if they are next door to us, and few 
of us thought to ask about the baby. One night 
coming in late from the theatre, I saw a large 

30 



^I^tis^irtiations of n Stietired Veteran 



rocking chair at the end of the floor on which 
the baby slept, and I was astonished on looking 
closer to see the Major in it. His gentle face 
had a worn and weary look on it, and the waiter 
told me next morning that the Major had walked 
the hall pretty much all night for several nights, 
and that he had carried the chair there for him 
to rest in. The baby, the waiter said, was not 
likely to live. As I went up after breakfast, I 
stopped to inquire, and the little one's mother, 
whose eyes were red with weeping, said I could 
come in, adding, "It would hardly make any 
difference, now." There sat the Major by the 
bed, with all manner of toys and dolls spread 
out on the coverlet, before the sick child's eyes. 
Like a man's idea of doing something, he had 
bought them. Poor fellow ! it was all he could 
think of to do. The little blue eyes were changed 
and the thin little hands were restless. They 
would pick out a toy and lay it aside, and then 
the dear old Major would arrange them freshly, 
so as to attra(5t her attention. I think she was 
delirious, for she asked that her ** tose" be given 
her, that she might talk with the ** Mady." And 
then the poor fellow would look up to the mother, 
and say: *'l think she can to-morrow, madam; 
I think she can to-morrow, don't you ?" 
C I think he hardly knew what he said it for, 
except with the vague idea of giving somebody 
hope. Anyhow, his voice seemed to arouse the 
little one, and she drew her little thin hand over 
his face, and said, in an inquiring tone, ** Mady ?" 
I think the world was floating out of sight and 
she wasn't certain. The Major turned, with a 
look of alarm, to the mother at the window, and 
said, *'Oh, do you think — " But whatever he 
was going to ask was answered before he asked 
it, for the mother leaned her head against the 
window pane and sobbed. He looked around 
the room quickly, as one who would look for 
help from somewhere, he knew not where, and 
then slipping out of his chair to his knees by the 

31 



<l9b$eriintion$ ot a Kettreft Veteran 



bedside, took the child's hand and laid his head 
on the coverlet. It seemed to stop the fast going 
spirit for a moment, and the other little thin 
hand wandered to the gray head and nestled 
there, and once more the -weak voice said 
'*Mady." As I softly closed the door, I could 
hear the poor old Major, between his sobs, 
repeating over and over, "Oh, my little one! 
my little one !" 

CL The next night several of us went to the 
Ladies' Parlor to set up with baby. At the head 
of the little coffin sat the Major. He was in full 
evening dress — none of us had seen him in 
evening dress before — and in his lappel was a 
bouquet of white flowers, evidently arranged by 
himself. He looked years older; indeed, about 
all there was left of his old look was the patient 
gentleness that had won us all. In the coffin, 
in the little hand, was another bouquet of white 
flowers, as awkwardly arranged as the one the 
Major wore. 'We did not need to be told where 
it came from. Always shy, he was even more 
so that night, from the unaccustomed duty he 
seemed struggling to perform. As the boarders 
dropped in, to look at the child, he seemed glad 
of the opportunity to go up again and look into 
the coffin, but he never went by himself. He 
had nothing to say, but if spoken to, replied with 
his never-failing sweetness of manner. Often 
during that night he was out for water, but those 
of us who saw his wet lashes, knew what took 
him out. Towards morning a lady watcher 
found lying on the centre table a broken doll 
which had belonged to the little one and which 
she had named after the " Mady." The Major 
went out quickly and came back no more. 
€L At the funeral next day it looked to us, though 
the parents of the little one were there, as if the 
chief mourner was not, for the Major was absent. 
Indeed, he was not at the hotel during the day, 
and it w^as late in the evening before he came 
home. He still had the dress suit on, but the 

32 



<|^b$eirtiatian$ of a Hetired IB^ter^n 



bouquet was gone. It needed no one tell us on 
what little mound of earth it had been left. I 
think I have said that the Major was not easy to 
be intimate with, and to that fact I ascribe none 
of us trying to console his grief by reference to 
his little love. He resumed his every day 
suit — he wore his full dress suit for several days, 
I think, as a sort of silent expression of mourn- 
ing — and resumed his old seat in the corner of 
the veranda, where he and the little one had 
such gay larks and which was their hea dquarters 
when they came from walk. He was the same 
gentle, sweet old man, except if anything a shade 
gentler to all and especially to children. When 
I came away he walked to the depot with me, 
and as we walked, told me he expecS^ed always 
to live where — well, where he lived now. That 
■was the nearest he ever came to speaking of 
what filled his heart. I can see him now, as the 
cars started, waving his hand and his blue eyes 
lighted up. 

C And now to the letter. It is just a few days 
since I got it. In writing to one of my hotel 
acquaintances I had sent my regards to the old 
Major, and asked if he had kept his promise to 
live there always. The answer shocked me. 
He had not kept his promise, the writer said, but 
he had gone to live in a another and Better 
Country. His health of late had not been 
strong, and a few weeks ago it had become clear 
that he was fast going. His last walk was out 
to the resting place of his little love. As he 
gre"w w^orse and weaker he asked that the rector 
be sent for. When he came, the Major told him 
that he had long ago placed his hopes on the 
Heavenly Father and tried to live as a child of 
His, and — with his old time gentle hesitation — 
he added, **as a poor unworthy child of His.' 
But it was not for that he had sent for him, it 
was this, and here the Major took from under 
his pillow a letter addressed to baby's parents, 
which he asked the rector to deliver. It had 

33 



C!$b$^rtiatiQn$ of a Uetlred ^^Hvan 



been written just after her death and was a 
simple request that he might be buried by her 
side. One thing he questioned the rector anx- 
iously about: as to whether in the Better Country 
we v^ould know each other. The letter was 
delivered and the next day baby's father and 
mother came to see her old friend. He was fast 
going, and lay with his eyes closed. Somehow, 
it seemed to cross his mind that they would 
know, and as they were leaving, he said, ** You 
think rU know the little one? Oh, I hope I will 
know her." After he was buried, adds the 
writer, we found some of her broken toys in his 
desk, and a list, written way back in the fall, of 
Christmas gifts to buy for her. 
C Has he seen her again ? It cannot be that the 
loving Father has not taken this simple hearted 
of His by the hand and led him to the little one 
who went before. And that in this blessed 
Christmas time, in that far off and better land, 
listening to the songs of angels and gazing at the 
glories of a brighter world, there walk, once 
more, hand in hand, the Major and his Last Love. 




Observations of a Hetirea Ueteran 

V 



<l9bs^iriiat{Qn$ of a B^tired Veteran 




HE people are taking their vacation — an 
imposing three-syllable name for a very 
tiny slice of holiday taken off an immense 
lump of work. Of all the impositions 
that I know, this vacation business, in 
the way "we take it, is greatest. Somehow, by 
some inexplicable way, it has grown into a 
custom with men who have business, to under- 
stand that a vacation means two weeks, fourteen 
days, out of three hundred and sixty-five, or one 
week out of every twenty-six. And then back 
again to w^ork. It is like taking a poor devil out 
of a box once a year, and after giving him a 
breath of fresh air, putting him back and letting 
the lid down on him again. It is often said that 
a thing is as free as air, but to a busy man the air 
is anything but free. Whiskey, cigars, newspa- 
pers, the church, the theatre are at hand and 
easy of access, but the long, lazy, untrammelled 
breathing of fresh air out of town is hard to get. 
I never see a cart-horse enjoying his dinner out 
of a nose-bag that I don't think this is the way 
business men get their fresh air. They sniff it 
from the streets on the run. They haven't time 
to unharness and drop the cart and take a long 
and satisfa(5\ory meal. I say I don't know who 
invented the two weeks system, but I strongly 
suspecS^ the do(5^ors had a hand in it. I never hear 
their flippant, devil-may-care ( you must see by 
this time that I am in an awful humor ) way in 
which they assure you that a week or two out 
will ** set you up all right," that I don't feel that 
I am getting nearer and nearer to the inventor. 
But what will I do with him if I get him ? It will 
be the old story, ** You didn't improve at the pink 
sulphur springs ; why, what did you do ? " Well, 
I lay down under the trees and had a good rest. 
** That's it, my boy; didn't I tell you exercise 
was the thing ; why, that's what you went there 
for." And then he is astonished that Smith 
didn't improve at the brown sulphur; "what could 
he have done ? " Well, he went fishing and 

36 



CObset^dtions of a B^tir^ft IB^teran 



hunted some. *' Great Scott, man, how did you 
expe(5^ to improve ; why, you walked off every 
pound you gained. Why, you went there for 
rest, not to walk yourself to death." And so they 
go. As if fourteen days could hold enough of 
health in them to improve anybody. Fourteen 
days is of no account to anybody unless, perhaps, 
it might be a two-weeks respite to a man to be 
hung, and even that would be a very temporary 
sort of satisfaction. 



C Now, that I am in a bad humor, let me touch 
on another grievance. I declare to you that 
something ought to be done about tomato cans 
— a law forbidding women to have or handle 
them. There now ; don't fly off and say I am 
attacking the gentler sex. I am not; I am at- 
tacking the combination of the two. Take the 
gentler sex by themselves and they are just love- 
ly, but when they go in partnership with tomato 
cans they are— well, I won't say anything rash. 
There is one thing, thank heaven ; I can keep my 
temper under all circumstances. Sitting in the 
cars the other day, engaged wasting a whole day 
of my fourteen to go something over a hundred 
miles, the new Floral Transfer Express came in 
sight. It was a lady of middle age — I won't say 
how old, though I wouldn't have forgiven her if 
she had been sixteen. Her arms were full of 
tomato cans, containing slips of flowers, and it 
took the condu<5tor and porter both to hoist her 
up the car steps — for like all women, she would 
rather be run over than let go her bundles. 
When she took her seat, the cans were dis- 
tributed on all the seats around her, two-thirds 
of them exuding the water with which the Solv- 
ers had been sprinkled while she was waiting at 
the station. I got two or three of them as a ret- 
ribution, I presume, for my having kept her from 
falling over the stove, and for my duplicity in 
saying that they would not be in the way in the 

87 



Cf^b$^tiiatian$ of a fl^titreft ^tt^v^n 



slightest. If I live I shall hereafter be a more 
truthful man. I was kept busy just four hours 
balancing them so as to keep them from being 
jarred from the seat by the motion of the car. 
But one ray illuminated the scene, and that was, 
when returning from the water cooler she sat 
down on a little nest of four of them. It looked 
like a judgment and I believe it was. I don't 
mind the deadly traps women set on window 
ledges, in the shape of tomato cans filled with 
flowers to slip down on man's head, but I do in- 
sist that railroad authorities should not allow 
them to bring canned flower gardens into the 
cars with them, and in that I have the support 
of every free born American citizen. 

n ^ & 

C While I was away I learned a secret that is 
worth a good deal of money to any young man 
intending marriage, and that would have been 
without price to me if I had known it thirty years 
ago — before I knew the estimable woman, who, 
in company, insists that I am her better-half, 
and in private treats me as if I were hardly a 
sixteenth. I learned it at sea. Just before we 
sailed out of a port one afternoon a couple came 
down to the wharf, which consisted of a very 
large and fine-looking young woman and very 
small young man, who carried himself with much 
meekness. \Vhy will little men marry big 
women? They looked like they had not been 
long married. When they came on board she was 
the captain and he ranked about cook. When 
they got off", forty-eight hours after, he ranked as 
admiral aud she ranked about a hand before the 
mast. When they got on board, she called him 
William, and he called her *' Maria dear.*' When 
they got off" she called him *' Willie dear," and 
he called her plain " Maria." When they came to 
supper she was the man of the two — two hours 
after, she was laid out on the deck benches, vow- 
ing every minute that she would die. From that 
moment he commenced advancing in rank. He 

38 



<9b$etiiations of a Betireft Veteran 



was not subje(5t to seasickness, and walked the 
plunging deck like a bantam rooster. In a firm 
voice he ordered her to her state-room, where 
she remained till the evening of the next day. 
She came out a changed woman. She evidently 
viewed ** Willie dear" as a superior being, whom 
the sea itself couldn't conquer, and whose atten- 
tions to her in her sickness — which I am bound 
to add were kind and unremitting — were such 
as such beings bestow in charity on mortals 
made of humbler stuff. She came out of her 
stateroom the next evening as limp as a rag, and 
clinging to the little bantam as if letting go would 
be sure death. Seasickness had completely 
changed the manner and carriage of the two peo- 
ple. I could not help wondering if the bantam 
sawr his advantage as I sa^v it, and whether, now 
that he had her down, he would keep her down ? 
It struck me, while looking at them, that every 
man, sure of his sea legs, should early in his 
married life, take his wife to sea. It may give 
him a lifetime of peaceful rest. 



CL Still speaking of the sea ; for I am too far from 
shore now to turn back, we had one day of it in 
which was painfully illustrated the line, * 'Water, 
water everywhere, and not a drop to drink." 
The steward, having been changed from his own 
ship to ours without notice, had not laid in his 
wines and liquors for the voyage. It was awful 
news when it was announced after getting out 
to sea, and paled many a cheek. Much to our 
suprise, however, all the next morning one of 
the passengers appeared in a state of exhilaration 
not to be accounted for by anything we had seen 
on the table. Later, he appeared still worse, and 
as he did not appear at dinner, we concluded that 
he was drinking to excess in his room. A pas- 
senger said indignantly that **the man was killing 
himself," and volunteered to go in and see about 
him. About dark, that day, the volunteer made 
his appearance on deck. After some uncertain 

39 



Cf^bs^im^tions of ^ B^tiir^d l^^ter^n 



steps he managed to seat himself on a coil of rope. 
Looking at us >vith a look of solemn philanthropy 
in his face, he announced thickly, that "I got 
t'way from 'm at last." It was very clear that 
he had. 



C Do you know that I never travel the sea that 
I am not pervaded by an antagonistic and contra- 
di<5\ory frame of mind that sets itself against all 
the popular and religious ideas of it. The ocean 
impresses me with neither the majesty nor the 
power of God. Indeed, it does not impress me 
with God at all, but to the contrary, gives me 
a sort of undefined, painful unbelief. To me, 
somehow, there is no other side of the ocean. 
And looking out on its boundless space, cov- 
ered with the blue vault lighted by millions of 
worlds and floating over, to me, bottomless 
waters, I feel so lost in space, such an infinitesi- 
mal atom, that the do<5lrine of the sparrow that 
falls seems a chimera, and a God inconceivable. 
I wonder if this is not so with others. I wonder 
if all of us do not shrink from this immensity and 
take refuge in our own hearts where alone we 
can hear the voice of God, and where, at any 
hour or in any scene, we can find an instant 
answer to all our doubts. There is but one spot 
on the ocean that leads me to a sort of a fanciful 
realization of a future life. It is that red one 
made by the setting sun, especially if we be off 
shore, and the birds are flying landward. The 
roseate.bridge thrown across the water, swing- 
ing with the waves, the intense and silver bright- 
ness of the centre of the arc framed in the even- 
ing clouds that roll around it, and the gleaming 
wings of the birds, as they flash across the disc 
and disappear in the shining centre on their 
way homeward, somehow bring to my mind the 
gates ajar and the souls flying from earth to their 
final rest. There may be beautiful picf^ures to 
come after this life ; if there are, sunset at sea is 
as near as our mortal minds can yet come to them. 

40 



Observations of a Retired Ueteran 

VI 




Il^tis^roations of a ftetireft ISeteran 



ELL, we have gotten you into a new 
year ! Life and Fate and Time, all have 
managed to get you here. With many 
of you they had a hard pull to get you 
here. Some of you have been near to 
death ; some of you so miserable you hardly 
wanted to try another year here, and the major- 
ity of you have shown the least interest about 
getting here. I don't reproach you ; you are only 
following the perverse example of Human Nat- 
ure. Did it ever strike you that the globe and 
the people who live on its surface, are always 
marching different ways ? While all the restless 
tide of humanity moves to the West, the globe 
turns itself to the East. On its surface, Man is 
much like the acrobat we see at the theatres, 
who, mounted on his parti-colored ball, faces 
one way while it moves the other. It must be a 
queer spectacle to those who, from the planetary 
dress circle of the universe, are watching us 
through their opera glasses. It must be still 
queerer to them when they hear us chanting a 
Miserere at the approach of an invincible line 
across the face of Time, as imaginary as the 
Equator, and when it is passed, filling the air 
with a Jubilate — the songs of the dying and the 
coming year. It is rather a comfort to us that 
>ve don't believe in the dress circle of gazers ; 
that we have the comfortable belief that we are 
the only people in the Universe, and that beyond 
the questionable discovery of a canal across one 
of the planets, the wisest of astronomers have 
found no evidence of human life elsewhere. And 
so, with a Crusoe-like sense of solitude, we live 
on our traditions, on our religions, and on our 
ideas of Man to the exclusion of the rest of the 
Universe. 

CL With an impartial judgment, therefore, and 
not influenced by the approval or disapproval of 
this vast dress circle, in whose existence we 
have no faith, let us take up these imaginary 
lines for a moment. It is unquestionable that, 

42 



<9ti$etiiatian$ of n H^tireft ^eteti^n 



whether for good or evil, they have descended 
to us by tradition and custom as a legacy. They 
are sufficiently real to be of pra<5\ical use, and 
they are used. It is by them that we set a time 
— alas, that we should have the necessity of do- 
ing it — to discard some vice, some sin, some 
w^eakness. We use them in the interest of pro- 
crastination — that we may put off the parting 
day with something our conscience, or our taste, 
or both, disapprove. By them we appoint a time 
when we shall say to the divine spark within 
our breasts, you may flame out into our daily 
life. By them we give a respite which alas, 
often ends in a commutation of sentence and 
oftener still in a full pardon and restoration to 
peace. 

CSo, you see, I do not think a great deal of old 
year remorse or New Year resolutions. I think 
they are just that much better than none at all, 
and this has to be qualified by the damage they 
do in having us put off reformation. That a man 
should fix a day to reform in this or that partic- 
ular, is at least an evidence that he is aware of 
his need of it — a great point gained. These 
years are but little stepping-stones across the 
narrow brook of Time that pours into the vast 
ocean of Eternity, and it is a good sign when a 
man approaches the next, and the next, and the 
next with increasing reverence and sense of the 
responsibility of his progress. It is a good sign 
when a man begins to discover in the impedi- 
ments of life, w^hat is necessary and what is ab- 
solutely hurtful to him in the journey of life, and 
when, with the discovery, he summons up 
enough resolution to fix a day to throw away the 
bad. It is hard for the best of us to get our load 
rightly picked over. When we have failed to 
start right in youth, it is unspeakably hard after 
getting out into the dust and glare of the world 
to assort our burden over, and drop what ill ele- 
ments we have gathered on the road. That a 
man should fix a time to do this is itself a good 

43 



<9{i$^ifiiat{oiis of a Betit^d ^B^ter^n 



thing and just that far these imaginary lines are 
good. 

CBut something far better, far manlier, is to 
have the firmness to draw our own lines at our 
own times. It is so peculiarly a personal matter 
that we can well afford to let the ^A^orld have its 
lines and we have our own. If you agree with 
me, then your own line is drawn at To-day and 
Every Day. If a man cannot enter on a new life 
every day, he can unquestionably enter on at 
least a newer life every day. It must be a bar- 
ren and unfruitful mind to which something — 
good or evil — is not added every day, to make it 
that much newer. You know this yourself. You 
have seen healthy, pure-minded boys start out in 
life and you have met them later with minds so 
darned with vice here, and patched 'with sin 
there, that you hardly recognized them. That 
transformation was not done in a day. You have 
seen boys that you knew at school without a bad 
habit, and when you met them again they had 
added to their lives drinking, gambling, every- 
thing this side of a police court. That was not 
done in a day. We do nothing in a day — not 
even reform in a day. All good and evil is a 
matter of ascent and descent — the latter only the 
faster because the grade is easier. It is not an 
easy experiment in the world to be a good man. 
No man ever fixed a day to become a good one. 
It is an uphill road, a long road, and one who 
proposes to walk it must fix no later hour than 
now lest night-fall find him far from the end 
of it. 

C But the young man who determines to walk 
it in this day, has a far easier road than he would 
have had thirty years ago. It is the fashion to 
say that the road grows no better. It is not true ; 
the world's opinion grows better every day. 
There were many things respecS^able thirty years 
ago that are absolutely disreputable now. Then, 
a middle-aged man might drink at a bar with a 
boy of twenty. If he did it to-day he would be 



(!^b$erti^tion$ of a Bttittd ^^te?im 



marked at once. Then, drinking and gambling 
were looked upon as the wild oats a young man 
might sow, without losing caste. To-day, the 
young man who drinks and gambles is looked 
upon as of doubtful social position, by both men 
and women. To-day, in making their lists of 
invitations, leaders in society cross out the names 
of dissipated young men as promptly as they do 
those of fast young women. Whereas thirty 
years ago there was rather a mantle of senti- 
mental charity fitted on the shoulders of a dis- 
reputable young fellow, to-day he is roughly 
talked of as a "drunkard" or a "common fellow"; 
terms that no one dreamed of applying to him 
then. There has been nothing that public opin- 
ion, especially that sed^ion of it that may be 
called social opinion, has changed in more than 
in the standard it fixes for, and demands from, 
all men, and particularly young men. The result 
is that when a man wants to be superior to vice 
now, he has the moral weight of a sounder pub- 
lic opinion and finds the road easier than he 
would have had thirty years ago. 
Cl have said nothing to you about any higher 
inducement to commence a better life every day, 
than those you can find in the world. They are 
quite sufficient, or ought to be. A healthy body, 
a clear mind, success in the w^orld — these are 
the rewards which a good life offers here. There 
is just one other word about what it offers else- 
where. I am not a preacher, you need not be 
afraid of a sermon. I am just one of yourselves ; 
only I have come over a longer road than you 
have, and have seen more of its pitfalls as w^ell 
as more of its sign-boards. Nor do I pretend to 
know more than you of what it offers elsewhere. 
But I just wish to say one word to recall what 
you already know ; what you must know. There 
is nothing that we all know better — nothing 
that is more surely planted in the human mind 
than that this is only a part of our life ; that when 
we shall reach a future existence, we shall there 

45 



<|^bs^irtintion$ of a B^tited HitUtan 



find a life awaiting us which will match with the 
piece we carry from this one. It is a very grave 
thought — graver than any which we shall con- 
sider on earth, if we are intelligent men — which 
the match will be — whether it will be found in 
one of infinite misery or one of infinite better- 
ment. Here we have the power to say which it 
shall be. It is a priceless power. Let us use it, 
not in fixing days for reformation, not in lament- 
ing over promises of reforms broken, and fixing 
other days to come ; but in living a newer life 
every day. As we can make no bargain nor 
compromise about the time and place where our 
life shall end, let us take the matter into our own 
hands and so live that it will matter little when 
or where the end comes. So live that when the 
summons come, 

" Thou go not, like the quarry slave at night 
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed 
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave 
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams." 




46 



Ob$eri^ation$ of a Retired Ueteran 

VII 



0b$]eirtti^tion$ of a Betiteft ^i^ti^rait 



■ SOMETIMES come to the conclusion that 
it is in Winter that a Philosopher has his 
several trials. That is, of course, a mar- 
ried Philosopher. For of the other sort I 

take no account, seeing that with their 
mode of life they have little need of Philosophy, 
unless, indeed, it be esteemed so lowly a remedy 
as to be put at the beck and call of men for evils 
they invite to themselves. Philosophy I hold to 
be a Patent Medicine of the higher sort, which 
is to be taken only for those afHid^tions brought 
us by others, and by which we are enabled to 
assuage our own misery through inspe(5\ing from 
an elvated plane the folly, or extravagance, or 
weakness of those who have afflid^ed us. It is a 
mental jack-screw by which we wind ourselves 
up to a height from which we can look down on 
lacks in others. To lose sight of our own pain 
after shooting down a flight of steps, in grave 
pitying contemplation of the stupidity of the 
chambermaid who left the bar of soap on the 
first step — that is your true Philosophy. And 
the man who forgets to rub his back, through 
pitying her ignorance, is the true philosopher. 
It is a quality from the gods, and whether exhib- 
ited over the minor calamity of soap, or the graver 
distress to which the married Philosopher too 
often falls heir, shows its origin in a heavenly 
calm. To him, I think I have said, this calm has 
its severe trial in the winter ; but now that I 
think of it again, if I were writing this in the 
summer, I should say that season was the sever- 
est. Indeed, thinking of it still further, I am 
puzzled to decide on any season that does not 
bring to him the severest trials of his heavenly 
serenity. The other night Mrs. Boyzy, as she 
slipped one of the little stockings off the wooden 
ball, which has served our children for so many 
years and so many purposes — from filling out a 
croquet set, to the braining of their parents— her 
kindly, and to me still beautiful face, lighting up 
with a smile, said : '* We are having a real gay 

4« 



<9{i$^irtiatian$ of a H^tit^ft Qeteiran 



winter in Staunton, dear." Alas, I knew it well. 
Between High Teas and Blue Teas, and Ladies' 
Lunches and Bands of Twenties, I knew it well. 
I knew it from the number of times that I have 
had to steal in like a thief in the night, at my 
own side gate and make my way into a cold set- 
out in the nursery, while a High Tea was pro- 
gressing down stairs accompanied by the hum of 
feminine voices. I knew it from the cold nights I 
have had to carry our eldest daughter to her 
club, with the dreary refled^ion that it was to be 
still colder later, when young Jones or young 
Tompkins would have to bring her home ; and 
when Mrs. Boyzy would vrake me from my 
slumber and in dressing gown and slippers I 
would shiver behind the front door till young 
Jones and she, after much low murmuring, would 
separate, and the light of the family would con- 
sent to come inside. I knev^ it. I alv^ays know 
it, being a vi<5\im of dyspepsia — from the bon- 
bons and other gim-cracks which are served out 
at my family table after these lunches and teas, 
and which are persistently served out until, as 
my wife calls it, they are '* finished." Had I not 
that very evening had served to me a piece of 
fruit-cake made, I believe, when our eldest girl 
was in short dresses ! I knew it from the short 
party calls which have rattled like bird-shot 
against the Boyzy mansion, to the utter wreck 
of my quiet evenings with Mrs. Boyzy — a 
woman that I had much rather talk to than all 
the callers in the world. And all this that I 
knew so well, was put by that estimable woman 
under the head of a ** real gay winter." Before I 
could apply the elevating mental jack-screw that 
raises me above all earthly troubles, I could not 
help feeling that the inquiry was pretty much 
like asking a scrambling lobster boiling in the 
pot, if he was not having a real gay evening ? I 
am afraid I mentioned some such impression to 
my wife, for I was soon astonished by finding 
that I was instrumental in the whole business. 

49 



** But, my dear," she replied, ** we have to do it. 
Every one does it." We ! I was astonished to 
find that instead of being a vidtim I had been an 
accessory, perhaps the chief criminal, in bring- 
ing it about. A few questions from the ever- 
ready partner of my joys soon convinced me 
that if I had not been a great criminal, it 
was only through lack of time and opportunity. 
Did I have any idea of what was due to the 
position of my family in society ? What would 
become of our children's *'prospe<5\s" ? What 
sort of life would my family lead — and here the 
severe infle<5^ion of her voice convinced my 
crime-stricken conscience that nothing but a 
miracle — and Mrs. Boyzy — could have saved 
my family from utter social destru(5\ion if I had 
been allowed to have my way. Happily, by this 
time, Philosophy had come to my aid, and look- 
ing through its beautifying and mellowing mist, 
all was changed. The teas and the lunches and 
the clubs appeared in the brightest tints ; the 
shivering waits behind the front door changed 
into evening strolls into tropical gardens ; the 
gray sprinkled hair of my wife changed into the 
sunny auburn of her youth, and she once more 
stood in the little church of our old home listen- 
ing to the words, '*For better or for worse." 
Happy the married Philosopher who wears 
around his neck with an even temper and an un- 
derstanding mind, this talisman of happiness 
devised by far-seeing men of other days — 
**For better or for worse." Man cannot harm 
him nor Womankind disappoint him. 

SOS 

Cl have been sitting up by the bedside of a 
dying Adjed^ive. It was not through pity that I 
sat there, but through hate. For I detest an 
Adje(5\ive. It is the father of lies, the author of 
afire(5tation and the progenitor of all exaggeration. 
They should be remitted to limbo with all the 
other crudities of youth. I have listened to the 

50 



®b$^t]iation$ of n Hetiireft ^^teran 



point of exasperation, through an evening, to the 
absurd use of adjed^ives by young girls of edu- 
cation and with some claims to good taste. 
Somehow it sometimes comes to me, that this 
use of adjecS^ives is the besetting sin of the 
female conversationalists of this day. Some 
young fellows unsex themselves so far as to fol- 
low the bad example, but the majority of that 
sex substitute oaths for adjectives, which is a 
social habit on too low a plane for criticism here. 
But on all sides in the social conversation of the 
young people of this day, it seems to be agreed 
to give good, plain, strong English the go-by and 
to indulge in the embroidery of adjecftives. 
Tawdry adje<5\ives such as * beautiful ', ' lovely ,' 
* horrid', awful*, and the like worn tinsel. I 
suppose I might venture the assertion without 
fear of contradi<5\ion, that this is the stock in 
trade in most young girls in qualifying their con- 
versation. The use of that tinsel gives a wholly 
unreal tone to what is being said and is so preg- 
nant with affec5\ation as to be tiresome. Between 
slang and adje<5tives, it is hard to choose, both 
are so detestable from a woman's lips. The 
difference is that the adje<5\ive insidiously cap- 
tures the refined mind, while slang only holds 
captive the coarse mind. In a plain and intend- 
ed to be truthful statement of any occurrence, 
the injedtion of three or four adjed^ives will 
change the whole tenor of narration, and give it 
a vraisemblance of untruth which it is hard for 
the hearer's mind to erase. As a matter of fadt, 
an adjed^ive ought to be a thought, not a word. 
A fad^ should be stated without embroidery, and 
we should think whether it is beautiful, lovely, 
and the like. There are many thoughts in the 
human mind that are not translatable into words. 
They may have been in some other language 
long gone, but they are not so in ours. As those 
words have gone into oblivion, so should the 
majority of our English adjed^ives follow them. 

51 



<!f^(i$^irtiat{0n$ of a Bettr^d IBi^t^tmt 



I have forgotten to tell the patient I have been 
sitting up with. It is the adje<5tive * tasty.' Years 
ago Mrs. Boyzy set her foot down on this word, 
and as in duty bound, I also set my foot down. 
Whether our two feet have stamped the unhappy 
adje(5\ive out, or from some other cause that I 
know not of, its end has certainly come. As in all 
fierce popular outbreaks against long existing 
oppression, the weakest and most insignificant 
of the oppressors are often the first to fall, so this 
unexaggerative, unaggressive, ill-sounding little 
adje(5\ive is the first to die. Let us hope that an 
early day be appointed unto the others to fol- 
low it. 

» D O 

C Have you ever watched a man going down ? 
It is an interesting study, and a unique one, for 
the reason that no other animal has language by 
which to express the various stages at which he 
arrives before dropping out of the Procession of 
Life. Nor has any animal so many contrivances 
with which to dodge and play at hide and seek 
with Death. The earthly affed^ion which abides 
in man, seems to overmaster all the other 
emotions — faith, hope, everything, — and he 
who firmly believes in a future existence is 
found as frantic in his efforts to delay its coming, 
as the veriest agnostic. Then faith seems to be 
a theological treasure of this earth, rather than 
a treasure of the future. The man with no tie 
to bind his soul to this planet is as relu(5lant to 
leave it as he who has the strongest ties of 
friendship, love and fatherhood. All mankind 
seem to have that dread of it w^hich their chil- 
dren have of being put in a dark closet. But I 
am not going to investigate the mysterious dread 
of death, or the even more mysterious attach- 
ment to life. I am merely recalling to my 
memory men whom I have seen stagger awhile 
and then fall out of the line of life. There is no 

52 



<!^b$ieirti^ttan$ of a Betir^ft ^^t^mn 



more pathetic sight to me, than a man when he 
first finds that he is falling. Like a child, he 
cannot understand it. This strange feeling that 
he has never had before ; that pain that must 
come from this or that — they are all so new to 
him. He cannot realize that he is failing, and 
least of all can he realize the dread truth that it 
is time for him to fail. To a man's own mind he 
is always at that mythical stage, his '* prime," 
as long as health lasts. It is piteous to hear his 
excuses for his failing body — it was this impru- 
dence, it was that cold, it was too much or too 
little exercise — he cannot understand that it is 
the herald of the Messenger, and that a little 
>vay off through the mist he might see the Mes- 
senger himself holding the Lotus flower in his 
hand. It is more piteous still to see him, like a 
captured animal, seeking some way of escape 
through the bars. He must get a horse — it is 
only exercise he wants ; he must have a longer 
vacation — it is only rest he wants ; he must have 
more society — it is only recreation he needs ; he 
must have less society — it is only quiet he re- 
quires. His blindness is inexplicable. He will 
walk in a garden and point out to you a tree that 
cannot last longer than such a time ; he 'will 
point to a worn-out beast of burden that must 
die at such a time ; he knows the death date of 
everything that springs from earth except him- 
self. In his blind hope he grasps at the worst of 
straws. No new universal panacea comes out 
that he does not seize on it, and that he is not 
sure, for a little while is doing him good. 
At last he weakens in the struggle and is taken 
to the rear. The procession of Life moves on ; 
he never joins it again. If all this had happened 
to only one man, the World would be in tears. 
As it happens to all men, the W^orld hardly gives 
it a thought. But to him, that One Man is all 
the world, and it is hard to get his thoughts 
away from himself. As the Procession of Life 

S3 



#b$^rii^ti0n$ of ^ ^i^tited IBetermi 



passes on, and the hum of its marching columns 
grows fainter on his ears, let us hope that there 
may come to him that unworldly quiet that 
Death pityingly sends in advance, and amid 
which Hope steals noiselessly away from the 
bedside to make room for Faith. And in which 
he may take the pale flower from the hand of the 
Messenger, and following him through the dawn 
of a ne^v birth, see another Hand, holding out 
to him the purple amaranth of Eternal Life. 




54 



Observations of a Retirea Ueteran 

VIII 



O^bsemations ni a HetireO ^s^teran 



BEST ! Ah, what a delicious word to the 
sick and wearied man. Rest in mind 
and body! How unsatisfactory appear 
the gaudy picftures of the dreamer of 

Patmos compared with the simple words 
of the Master, "I will give you rest." I can 
hardly say why I sele<5ted Hampton for rest. I 
knew nobody here, and had never been here. 
But somehow I had taken up the impression 
that it was one of those old East Virginia 
towns that had been blown ashore by the tem- 
pest of civil war and lay stranded on the beach 
of the briny ocean of life. And that was the 
sort of place that quiet was to be found in. My 
first night was a happy confirmation of my 
choice. Standing on the wharf at which lay a 
little steamer, the scene was beautiful. The new 
moon hung in the west and cast its glittering 
line over the water for miles and miles away. 
Thick in the little harbor lay the slender masts 
of vessels with steady lights glowing in their 
rigging. Across the narrow bay stood the Nor- 
mal School with its three stories brightly light- 
ed, and further away was the gigantic Soldiers' 
Home with a thousand lights burning. To the 
east was the long bridge across Hampton creek, 
with every few minutes a lighted omnibus or a 
pair of carriage lamps going leisurely across. 
Further yet was a railroad train lighted and fly- 
ing across the trestle bridge. At the opening of 
the little bay were fisher boats, cpming in with 
all sail spread, the loud laughter and chaffing of 
the men easily heard at this distance. Turning 
inland, you see a broad street, with shade trees 
on each side casting dark shadows. The lights 
twinkle its whole length and at one point there 
is a bright spot — a pretty, white hotel with a 
treble deck of verandahs. That is my home for 
many days to come and there I am to be at rest. 
The call of the bugle sounds on the night air ; 
it is the ** taps " at the Soldiers' Home ; the salt 
water is beating with lazy monotone against the 

56 



<9b$^riidtion$ of a Setireft ^tt^v^n 



shore ; the fisherman have tied up their boats ; 
the last omnibus has crossed the bridge ; the 
young moon is getting to her bed and I turn my 
face toward the long street and the bright 
hotel. A man of high-toned and poetic mind 
would here insert something about his thoughts 
turning to his mountain home. Alas ! mine are 
turned with eager curiosity to what my break- 
fast tomorrow would be, reflecSting as I do that I 
am now in the land, or rather water, of oysters, 
soft crabs and fish. After all, of what common 
clay we are made ! 



CThe redeeming feature of ill-health, to me, 
has been that for the last few months I have 
been thrown Tvith many invalids and enjoyed 
their confidence to the fullest, ( and sometimes 
the most, to some extent). There seems to be a 
sort of free-masonry among sick people by which 
they at once become friendly and familiar. There 
is, also, if you only knew it, an aristocracy of 
ill-health ; that is, a man with two complaints 
stands much higher with his fellow invalids than 
a man with one ; and a man who has been sick 
for five years stands immeasurably higher than 
a mere cadet who has not been sick six months. 
Having only a two years' standing, I was forced 
to bear the contempt which I received from 
chronic cases, but I repaid it with interest on 
some evidently shoddy invalids, who were try- 
ing to work their way into society on an attack 
of only a few weeks duration. I remember one 
case, however, in which our whole aristocratic 
circle was swept into insignificance by a little 
lady, whom I saw after I left Hampton, and who 
didn't weigh ninety pounds. She had been an 
invalid, she said, for fifteen years, and while I do 
not recoUecS^ precisely her afflidtions, it appears 
to me that she had had chronic trichnia spiralis 
for that length of time, with intermittent cerebro 
spinal meningitis tending towards hydrophobia, 

57 



lObs^mations af a B^tired ^et^ir^n 



This imposing patient cowed the whole invalid 
circle. But one man showed the slightest resis- 
tance, and that was old man Smith, who had 
been very proud of his chronic liver complaint. 
He told me in confidence the next day that he 

believed '*the whole story was a ." It 

is due to the company, however, to say that the 
narration was received with polite expressions 
of sympathy and wonder, while there was at the 
same time a silent conviction that it was of this 
complication of diseases that Ananias died. If a 
lady could rout us, however, it was not permitted 
to a man. When another of these aristocratic 
invalids, one of those **four giant shows under 
one canvas," came along, varying in sex from 
the first mentioned, he was speedily brought to 
grief. At supper, the first evening of his arrival, 
one of our circle having asked him with incau- 
tious politeness ** how he was ? " the new arrival 
opened on us with a sonorous discourse filled 
with chronic affli(5\ions mixed up with pious re- 
fle<5\ions. I think he would have established his 
claims to high rank had not a consumptive-look- 
ing boarder with a haggard face taken advantage 
of a pause in the speech, and without looking up 
from his plate^ remarked in a squeaky voice, 
** The remainder of the service will be concluded 
at the grave." The interruption was a bomshell. 
I have said that there is a free-masonry among 
invalids ; I might add that it almost amounts to 
the old co-operation plan. I have been offered 
advice without limit and even medicine from my 
fellow sufferers. I have also been furnished with 
a list of their own attending physicians, all of 
whom have performed remarkable cures. It is 
a full and complete list of fifty-eight physicians 
in good professional standing, and I will dispose 
of it at a moderate compensation to any apothe- 
cary or undertaker who desires to purchase. 



St 



<!^b$etiiattons of ^ ISetir^d ^ttttan 



C Where was I? Oh, speaking of invalids! 
Sickness is to be dreaded with many because of 
death, but from the high moral plane from which 
I regard it, it is chiefly obje<5tionable on account 
of the lying it gives rise to. Dire<5\ly a man 
gets well on the way down hill, the good natured 
world gets this lie photographed, and each man 
presents him a copy — ** Why, I never saw^ you 
looking better in my life ! " For the first few 
copies that are presented him the poor devil is 
grateful ; of the next few he is suspicious, and 
thereafter he is worried, vexed and profane. If 
you remonstrate against the truth of the assur- 
ance and call attention to the prominent skeleton 
which you are presenting to the public eye, the 
good natured liar looks you unflinchingly in the 
eye while he presents you with another litho- 
graph bearing this inscription: **Oh, I didn't 
mean that you were fatter, I meant that your 
skin is clearer and your eyes are brighter." Not 
having a sample of your former skin, nor another 
pair of eyes handy to confute him with, this well- 
meaning liar walks off" triumphantly. I, myself, 
however, am no better than the rest of them, 
though my presenting the lithograph cost me 
dearly one day. In one of the towns where I 
stopped, a young girl came to the hotel the 
shadow of what she had been. I suppose one 
evening I must have felt unusually chipper and 
kindly myself, for, coming up on the porch where 
she was sitting, I dashed off" the old lithograph, 
** W^hy you are looking so much better." Her 
eyes — I never saw eyes that had so much of the 
other world and so little of this in them — turned 
on me with a half kind, half reproachful look, 
and at once filled with tears. She merely said 
gently, "Thank you," and got up and walked 
away. God forgive me, that I should have inter- 
rupted a soul so near to setting sail, to pay a 
lithographed and lying compliment. Three weeks 
later, in another town, I was told that she had 
gone on the last long voyage. I have burned my 
lithographs. 

59 



Observations of a Retired Ueteran 

IX 



#bsenidti0ns of a Retired Veteran 



T Afton in the Blue Ridge Mountains. 
There now, sit still, I am not going to 
commence about ** lifting their eternal 
heads ; " indeed I am not. Did it ever 
strike you, though, how different a man 
talks when he gets a pen in his hand; how impos- 
sible it is for a man to keep his feet on the ground 
and use a reasonably plain English without 
absurd adjecStives, when he is "writing descrip- 
tions of scenery. It is a miserable piece of affec- 
tation, you know ; and they know you know, 
but they do it all the same. It comes, I presume, 
from a desire to assert the possession of imagi- 
nation. The vulgar name for it is **flowery" and 
I am not certain that it is not a good name, 
for the chief business of flowers is to please the 
senses. You will find it popular with three 
classes of orators — commencement orators, po- 
litical orators, and pulpit orators. The first use 
it because they know no better ; the second, 
from the belief that it will catch those who know 
no better ; and third because they find that a 
bright coat of paint to a religious sign post is 
particularly attra<5\ive to the female members of 
the congregation. With the first class, it is ig- 
norance ; with the second, business, and with 
the third, a mild, but well defined form of insin- 
cerity. You will find, too, that, with few 
exceptions, flowery ministers are — little else. I 
do not mean a forcibly drawn pi<5lure ; that is a 
"wholly different thing ; I mean gaudy, flowery 
word painting. I remember at Trinity church 
in Staunton once, a description by a minister 
named Tucker, of a sacrifice made by the Jews 
at Jerusalem. Do you know, though that was 
years ago, I can see to-day the scene the man 
drew standing out in memory. It was powerful, 
but there was not a particle of prismatic coloring 
about it. It was a bas-relief cut on granite — 
full of power, enduring, and with a touch of 
eternity about it. Such pid^ure-drawing is not 
flowery and does not w^ither. 

62 



^bsertiattons of a Uetir^d l^et^ran 



Cl know that the popular subje<5\s of interest in 
the mountains are sunrise and sunset, but for 
something really worth writing about, and much 
more rare, give me a fog spread out at the feet 
ike a white carpet. Ah ! that is something 
worth seeing. The valley, a mile below, is hid- 
den in the gauzy sea, and the tops of mountain 
spurs here and there peep out like little islands. 
The white, silent sea is spread for miles and 
miles. Underneath it is life — an invisible wagon 
rumbles, a horse neighs, a man calls to his neigh- 
bor, but the surface is calm, still, level. You 
would not be surprised to see a steamer come 
puffing from behind one of the islands. The 
wind presses the sea into billows which shift to 
and fro as water v^ould. Away down on a wagon 
road you hear the tinkling of bells and a flock of 
sheep emerge from a rift in the mist and turning 
disappear in another cloud of it. The fog parts 
again and a white top wagon, with four horses, 
is seen toiling slowly along. The driver cracks 
his whip and the sea of mist slowly rolls over 
him again. Another shifting, and a little farm- 
house appears, with a man riding from under 
the trees. He rides into the mist and the farm- 
house disappears. A railroad train rushes out 
of a bank of white wool and into another, in 
complete silence. The white sea gets uneasy 
under the wind, and the sun begins to brighten 
up the clouds above. Then the woolen surface 
begins to move ; a mountain spur makes its ap- 
pearance clear against the sky ; the farm houses 
silently glide from under the sea ; a flock of 
sheep, whose shepherd dog's bark you have 
heard from under the mist, is revealed. The sea 
is fast being blown away. The sun comes out. 
The whole landscape is changed and the great 
billows of mist that have covered it are now thin 
strips of white cloud driven across the blue sky. 
Once more you see spread out at your feet the 
valley, checkered 'with farms and orchards, and 
dotted with farmhouses shining in the sun. The 

63 



#bs^rtiations ol a ISettr^d ^^t^ran 



miracle of nature is over. Let the enthusiasts 
have their sunrise and sunset; lovers their moon- 
light ; but as for me, give me a mountain fog. 

o a o 

C I suppose you don't know Maria ? You ought 
to. She was a great comfort to me while I was 
at Hampton. Did I love her? Ah, most truly! 
I have sat on the hotel porch and watched Maria 
in her front yard by the hour. I suppose if 1 
were to meet her to-day she would hardly recol- 
\e6k my name, so inconsistent is her sex, but I 
left my heart with her. It is true that she was 
not conventional, that her skirts hardly came to 
her knees ; that she could not write, and that 
her general air was not that of a society woman, 
but to a sick man she was an inexpressible com- 
fort. I have "written her name Maria, but she 
was also called Mar-i-a, Mari-a-a-a, Mari-uh, 
and oh-h-h, M-a-r-i-a. These names she was 
called from the rising of the sun to the going 
down thereof. I don't think I have ever known 
a more versatile genius than Maria. At times 
she was a steamboat, with loud blowing of the 
whistle ; at other times she was a bear and de- 
voured other children with grunts and growls of 
great ferocity ; at other times, she was a horse of 
such high mettle and spirit as could only find 
vent in chewing up the front gate and pawing 
her mother's geraniums into the earth. But it 
was in her great and realistic combat with dogs 
that I admired Maria most. Every day about 
noon two setter dogs would come lounging about 
the yard with the most innocent air in the world. 
It v^as Maria's lunch time and the little thing 
would toddle in and bring out her lunch. No 
sooner would she appear than the dogs would 
rush on her and roll her in the dirt. There was 
a brief scuffle, an agonizing scream, the dirt flew, 
the dogs rushed ofl*, and Maria sat up in tears, 
dirt and hunger. The lunch was gone. By the 
time quiet was restored, the dogs would come to 

64 



<9bs^triintion$ of a H^ttred ^et^ran 



see if they had left any in their hurry, and the 
forgiving little one would start in to play with 
them as if nothing had happened. I was there 
two months, and if Maria got a whole lunch in 
that time, I didn't see it. Sometimes the dogs 
had forgotten to look at their watches and would 
be a couple of minutes behind time, but all the 
same they rushed on her and took what there 
was. Often the screams would bring her mother 
out, and Maria would go into a little explanation 
which, as she couldn't talk, didn't make things 
very clear, consisting chiefly of **a-h-s" and 
**o-h.s." Little as she was, she had a spice of 
shrewdness which unfortunately didn't v/ork 
well. She would commence her scream direcStly 
she brought her lunch out, but as soon as she 
found it only served to make the dogs more 
promptly on time, she gave it up. I have had a 
good deal of amusement, one way or another, 
but Maria stands at the head of the list in my 
memory. 

DOB 

Cl made the acquaintance of a married couple 
at Afton. I do not often hold up the private life 
of my acquaintances to illustrate moral reason, 
but I must make this an exception. I believe the 
gentleman was brought to Afton for the protec- 
tion of sheep, and to test the statement that a 
goat with a flock of sheep would keep off" the 
dogs. When I saw him he was a moral wreck. He 
had become a professional lounger around the 
depot where he chewed up old paper, straw, and 
such odd crumbs of lunch as the passengers 
V70uld throw out of the car windows. His hair 
was full of burrs and he had gotten one of his 
legs broken by the cars. His occupation was to 
wrestle with all the trifling fellows, white and 
black, around the depot, butt them when he 
could, and be ridden by them when he couldn't. 
He had long since lost his situation at the sheep 
fold, having proved rather an attrad^ion to dogs, 

65 



0b$etiiation$ of a Bietiir^a ^^teran 



who are fond of low company, than a prote<5tion 
to sheep. Untidy, thriftless, a loafer, kicked and 
cuffed about by the public and half starved, he 
presented a pitiable contrast to his wife, neat 
little lady, who, after her husband had lost his 
situation, left him and joined a respe<5table circle 
of cows and spent her time with them, fat, sleek, 
eminently respe(5\able, and as regular as clock- 
work in taking them out to pasture and bringing 
them home. The moral point that I wish to 
make is this — if you give a woman half a chance 
she will be a lady ; if you give a man half a 
chance he will go to the dogs. It is in the sex of 
the animal. 



Cl often hear it said of a man that he has ** the 
manners of the old school," by which is meant 
courteous, deferential manners. I don't know 
that any particular "school," old or new, will 
give a man good manners, but it is certainly true 
that age does ripen and mellow those of both 
men and women. As we grow older w^e become 
aware that there are a great many other people 
besides ourselves in the world, and that if we 
want to go through it smoothly we must keep to 
the right and not insist on keeping our elbo>vs 
akimbo in a crowd. A rude young man may re- 
form, but a rude old man may be regarded as 
having been illy bred early in life, and hopeless. 
Good manners are very like the catechism les- 
sons our mothers teach us when children. They 
don't count for a great deal at the time, but the 
result comes up in life a long, long time after- 
wards. I think I can tell you of the *' old school " 
where really good manners originated. The 
Teacher has long since gone, and sometimes I 
have fear the old school itself has changed, but 
He left the rule with us when He departed, and 
here it is : " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
thyself." After the Teacher left, many new doc- 
trines were brought about, and much chop-logic 

66 



<0tis^rtiati0n$ of a Betir^d ^et^ran 



was put into the text-books by those who suc- 
ceeded Him, but with all their human invention 
they have never approached the perfe<5\ion of the 
motto that He left behind for the corner-stone 
of good manners. It is that, I think, that makes 
old men have better manners; they have learned 
that there is a good deal more in the people of 
the world to appeal to their affe<5^ion and kindly 
toleration than they thought for at the beginning 
of their lives ; that there is a great deal of good 
in every man and woman, and that it won't do 
to pick out their faults to the exclusion of their 
virtues ; that a touch of kindly courtesy "will 
often reveal to you a wholly different man from 
the surly one who stood before you a minute be- 
fore; in short, our old man has learned more and 
more the lesson to love his neighbor as himself. 
That is the true **old school" founded eighteen 
hundred years ago. 




67 



Observations of a Retired Ueteran 

X 




C^bsertidttons of a Betfr^d V^teirmi 



HE procession of two regiments of veter- 
ans through our streets a few days ago 
must have set a good many of us retired 
veterans who ^vere not in the line, to 
thinking. It did me. It set me to think- 
ing, not of war, not of peace, not of reunions, but 
of how time has changed us all in twenty years. 
In a neighboring city where I volunteered, the 
old company, with the old name and the old 
uniform, is still kept up by our young successors. 
I saw it lately on parade, and as I saw the trim 
looking young fellows of from nineteen to twen- 
ty-five, clad in the same bright uniform of twenty 
years ago, and stepping out with all the brisk 
and cheery step of youth, it looked as if there had 
been a resurre(5tion of the old days. Could we 
old gray heads ever have looked like these ! 
Could that gay young spark mounted on the 
leading caisson horse and furtively chaffing No. 
13 be Hilleary and Hutchins come to life again ? 
Could that serious, slender boy, all attention to 
the word of command, be the grave and clerical 
Hale Houston of this day gone back to youth 
again. Can that sturdy No. 4 at the gun, be old 
Boss Lumpkin? Could \ve all have looked as 
fresh and full of youth, and as full of engaging 
humor and good temper as these young fellows ? 
I suppose we did, though it is hard to be believ- 
ed, even by ourselves. I can tell you of a reunion 
that, if promised, would bring more of the old 
boys together than all the patriotism than can 
ever fill the American heart. Just promise them 
that for that day they shall be young again ! 
Bless my heart, what a crowd you could have ! 
Young again, mark you, both in mind and body. 
I don't know one of the old fellows who, if he 
had the option, wouldn't take back the youth he 
had twenty-three years ago with the war, famine 
and hardships that followed. W^hat a deal of 
difference it does make to a man whether the 
world is behind or in front of him. 



70 



Cf^bs^mations of ^ l^etired ^Set^^an 



CL Do you know — of course this is confidential 
— that I am glad the schools have gone for the 
summer. Education has been a thorn in our 
family for some time past, indeed since the 
younger member got into the higher branches. 
Until lately it has been the impression of Mrs. 
Boyzy and myself that we spoke the English 
language with facility and much correctness, and 
as for facility I will put Mrs. B. against any 
picked nine that may be brought. But recently 
we have been greatly humiliated by our eldest 
girl, who comes back daily from school with a 
new pronunciation. Incredulity on our part is 
met by lugging the di<5tionary into the conflid^ 
and we are defeated at once. So vic5\orious has 
the little one become that we tremble when we 
hear, " Mamma, how do you pronounce so and 
so," and prepare for another humiliation. My 
•wife's plaintive, "It was pronounced so when I 
was a girl," is very touching to me, but when did 
the young ever have mercy on the old ? The last 
conflicSt had — I hope it will be the last — was 
over the word *' Squalor." The young one, after 
setting the usual trap of demanding hov7 v^e pro- 
nounced it, announced that it was spoken 
*'squaylor." At this my "wife, astonished into 
resistance, made her last flight, and said with 
much dignity, that that pronunciation was silly 
and there must be a mistake. In a moment more 
she was prostrated by the well dire<5led di(5\ion- 
ary. In the evening after the children had gone 
upstairs, Mrs. B. locked up her sewing and re- 
marked that a good deal of what is taught 
children in these days is nonsense. I did not 
reply. Had I, I should have been forced to re- 
mind her that she and I put our parents through 
the same mill in which the educational gods are 
now grinding us so sharply. I take it that pro- 
nunciation, I mean that of ordinary refinement 
and education, varies pretty much as bonnets do 
in style and, like them, is a matter that taste has 
a good deal to do with ; and locality as well. 

71 



#bsieirtidtton$ of ^ Kettr^d ^^t^irmi 



Forty years ago in the jungles of East Virginia I 
spoke glahss, fahst, ahnser ; I never heard of 
papa and mamma, but of father and mother, and 
I find they are teaching the children of this day 
to say that, too. I was taught to say g-yarden, 
c-yar, s-yuit, and, I suppose, that will also be 
resurred^ed after a while. Pronunciation, I take 
it, is a matter of provincial taste. Reading 
Chaucer, I have often wondered what standard 
of that sparsely educated day fixed the standard 
by which he could be read aloud. And by the 
bye "who, of this more cultivated day, is authority 
for fixing the standard? Not the Di<5tionaries, 
for they diff"er. I dare say that after all we must 
fall back on taste. In the national metropolis of 
America, I have noticed a half-dozen different 
pronunciations among educated people, so dis- 
tin<5t as to be readily noticed. But the best 
opportunity to be had is in an army gathered 
from all quarters of the country, or even from all 
quarters of a se<5tion, as the Confederate army 
was. I noticed a dozen different pronunciations, 
the two from North Carolina and Georgia being 
the most distincS^ly marked. I have heard it said 
hastily, that all educated people pronounce alike, 
but I think, with more deliberation and more 
opportunity for judging, it would be safer to say 
that all uneducated people pronounce alike. 



€L I am not one of the old men who take delight 
in ** le<5^uring " the young. I hate the very word, 
for I shall never travel far enough from my youth 
to forget how I disliked both the le<5\ure and the 
ledturer. But sometimes I have an indescribable 
yearning to go and say a v^ord to them. I feel 
pretty much like one -who, having found a circus 
to be of no account and leaving the performance, 
finds another man at the ticket-wagon eagerly 
putting down his money for a ticket. It looks 
like a pity and I want to tell him so. I was a lot 
of nice-looking young fellows the other day — I 

72 



#Ei$^irttatians of ^ Betit^d ^^tttnn 



was told they were boys from one of the Univer- 
sities, — standing on a corner badly flushed with 
liquor and swearing at a high rate. They were 
evidently out for "a time." I should have liked 
to say something like this: "Now, boys, just 
let this thing drop there. Really, there is nothing 
in it. No young man with a sound body can 
need liquor, and no one with a sound reason can 
need the excitement of cards. We old fellows 
have been all along there, and there is nothing 
in it. I am the chief secretary of the Ancient 
Order of Old Boys, and my opportunities of 
acquiring knowledge have been exceptional. I 
don't wish to hold up any raw head and bloody 
bones of premature death and disgrace, and all 
that sort of thing, but I would like to say this 
much to you : If you want to take a drink, take 
it and go about your business, but don't associate 
together for the purpose of drinking, whether for 
a night or for an hour. You will read, before 
the long life that is before you ends, a hundred 
ways of accounting for drunkards — heredity, 
inclination, regular drinking, grief, disappointed 
love, and all that sort of thing, but all put to- 
gether they do not begin to approximate the 
cause I tell you of, — " associating together." It 
is the associating together of boys, the late 
nights, the early morning drinks, taken more 
frequently later on, and lastly the appetite. It is 
the associating together for the purpose of drink- 
ing that causes that selvage of bad company to 
adhere to the good company you started out with 
earlier in the evening, and it is the selvage of low 
company that will give every self-respe<5\ing 
man a good deal of disagreeable refle<5lion when 
he comes to look back at it. Don't buy that sort 
of a ticket, my boy ; the show won't pay you. 



73 



#bsertiati0n$ of n Hg^tir^d 19^t^r^n 



C Speaking of veterans reminds me of something 
I would like to say right here. Do you know 
there is nothing more awkward to a man — that 
is nothing more awkward to me, and like all 
egotists I judge all by myself — than meeting a 
familiar friend whom I have not seen for twenty 
years. We expe<5\ each other to be the old 
heart-to-heart friends of long ago, but how to go 
about re-establishing the relation is the puz- 
zle. We have all had new friends, new histories, 
new lives since twenty years ago, and while we 
make an unsatisfa(5\ory attempt to be the same 
**old boys" to each other, each feels the dismal 
failure. Memory is faithful, but while we re- 
member with affe<5tion that we were Tom and 
Dick to each other then (twenty years ago) we 
cannot, out of that slender material, build up a 
hearty fraternal conversation of to-day. And 
with advancing years we find that the old sub- 
jecfts that we spent hours of mirth over, a life-time 
ago, are not amusing to-day, if indeed our defec- 
tive memories can recall them. Ah ! how little 
it took to furnish youth with mirth, that com- 
mon standing ground upon which all so easily 
form acquaintance and friendship. I trust I may 
be forgiven, seeing that I meant well, but I de- 
clare to you that I have pra<5\iced outrageous 
deceit in affe(5\ing to remember incidents that 
some of these old boys recall, and in trying to be 
agreeable by so doing. But doubtless you have 
also. Perhaps we all have. After all I take it 
that separation, like time, tries everything — love, 
friendship, even acquaintance, and those of the 
three which survive the test are like the ruins of 
ancient cities, of great value as curiosities, but 
worth little for aught else. Mrs. Boyzy remarks 
that this is a heartless view of it. But I silence 
that estimable woman by the observation that 
philosophers do not take the heart into account ; 
the heart is the field of young lovers, physicians* 
fees and patent medicines. This observation 



74 



#bsevtiatt0ns of a B^tired ^^teran 



"Which she does not understand, and, I may ad- 
mit to you I am not so clear about myself, con- 
vinces her that I am not only a philosopher, but 
a profound one. Ah ! to a man of profound 
observation, how many better ways of securing 
the respedl of the female sex there are than the 
primitive one of clubbing them. 




7S 



Observations of a Retired Ueteran 

XI 



<l9bserii^tlon$ of a l^etired ^^teran 



DO not reverence ministers of the gospel 
simply because they hold that office, any 
more than I esteem a man as a gentleman 
simply because he has the manners and 
dress of one. The bare fadl that at some 
period in his life, oftenest the period of youth, 
when the mind teems with odd fancies and am- 
bitions, a man has concluded that he is called to 
the ministry, has successfully gotten through 
theology and been ordained, forms too uncertain 
a foundation on which to base reverence, which 
is one of the most solemn emotions of the mind. 
But I do respecS^ and reverence the credentials of 
an earnest. God-fearing and self-sacrificing life 
which are found with these men, and I am 
obliged in excusing this weakness, to say that in 
a long and varied experience with them, these 
traits have been characTteristic of those I have 
met. But it is not my lack of reverence that I 
intended to write about, it is the contradicStory 
way in which those who are under their charge 
view this matter. The prad^ical, effecS^ive and 
ad^ive irreverence of professing Christians aston- 
ishes as much as it puzzles me. They believe, 
or assume to believe, in the sacredness of the 
ministry and in the reverence due ministers as 
such ; how do they show it ? It seems to me 
that the archite<5\ural custom of elevating the 
pulpit above the heads of the people arose out of 
the congregational custom of shooting at the 
preacher. You may tell me what you please 
about the "world's people, but it is the well- 
direcStcd volley from the communicants' pews, 
generally fired from ambush, that does the busi- 
ness for the preacher's influence. Did you ever 
think of the marked absurdity in the contrast? 
The subject of calling a preacher is prefaced by 
prayer ; the Almighty is invoked to send a man 
of His choice ; the man is installed with impres- 
sive ceremony and much prayer; he is introduced 
by other ministers at the installation with allu- 
sions to him as the under shepherd to whom is 

78 



C^bs^mations of a B^tired Veteran 



to be rendered obedience and reverence. The 
new man then goes heartily to work for God, 
and the congregation goes heartily to work on 
him. They criticise his style, peck at every im- 
perfecftion, intelledtual and social, and soon put 
him in a state of siege. If the Almighty, who it 
was at first claimed sent him, delivers him, he is 
in luck ; but the usual end is that the congrega- 
tion itself effe<5^s his deliverance by giving him 
the same warm experience that the terrapin un- 
dergoes when it is desired to see him "walk. 
After a persistent ham-stringing of the ministe- 
rial horse, the congregation are astonished that 
he cannot pull his load. I am a business man, 
and in many years have had many men in my 
employment, but nothing would have more as- 
tonished me at any time in my business life than 
to be told that I was systematically impairing 
and obstru<5ling the usefulness of the men that I 
was paying to work for me and from whose labor 
I expe(5\ed some profit. It is the most inexplica- 
ble inconsistency to me in congregations, which 
generally include a large percentage of business 
men. I have used the word systematically, 
because it seems to me that it is a system which 
prevades to a greater or less extent all congre- 
gations of all denominations, and is confined 
exclusively to no one. Nor is it the "worst ele- 
ment in a congregation that is guilty of it ; I am 
sorry to say that it is prevalent among even the 
best members. Even that excellent woman, 
Mrs. Boyzy, whose mind is often tortured by 
the apprehension that absence from church ser- 
vice will seriously affecSt my future prospecS^s, 
often regales me after church with keen criticism 
of the sermon and the weak points of our preach- 
er. And yet that estimable woman, on hearing 
our eldest daughter indulge last Sunday in a 
similar strain, warned her against the wicked- 
ness of her irreverence. I beg you to understand 
that I am not taking the part of pastors against 
congregations any more than I would take the 
part of our little girl against her pious mother, 
but what I write is merely to blaze the way, as 

79 



0b$eriiat!on$ of a BetlreA ^B^teran 



it were, to a settlement of the question: Whether 
a pastor is a shepherd set over a congregation 
by the Almighty, or whether he is a man whom 
an angry God has delivered into their hands that 
he may suffer for his sins. 



C Have I said anywhere in this paper that Spring 
has come? ^Vell, I say it now. It is a sad, 
gloom ytime to man, however woman may look 
at it. It is now that the family man sees loom- 
ing ahead the Easter bonnet trimmed with deadly 
$ marks, and the Spring outfits embroidered with 
the same costly material. Why is this ? Now, 
I have kno-wn X., my next door neighbor, for 
eleven years, and in that time I have never 
known him to have an Easter hat or an Easter 
coat or an Easter pair of pants. I saw him at the 
Opera lately and his wife had on a seal skin 
sacque, and plain X. himself had on no gloves. 
Why should X. be compelled to carry through 
life a bird of paradise, while he appears in the 
sombre and often shiny costume of the more 
humble crow ? And now that I have asked that 
audacious question, let me ask another : Why 
is it that as soon as the frost of age touches a 
man he commences to tone down his dress, and 
as soon as it touches a ^voman she commences 
to tone hers up with all the hot house appliances 
to imitate the spring time of life. I don't ask this 
in a snarly spirit ; but as a psycological riddle. 
Why is it that in November, with all her brown 
foliage and scarlet leaves and 'wind reddened 
sky, cannot be content with being handsome and 
natural, but should resort to the buds and flowers 
and bird-like airs of beautiful June to make her 
pretty. Ah, there are no flowers, no feathers, 
no ribbons, no latest fashions that can hold their 
own against Youth. Before it the milliner, the 
tailor and the mantua-maker are helpless to ren- 
der effedlive assistance to Age. Ah, Youth, 
careless, painless, peerless, I drink to you — and 
put a drop of peppermint in it. Tom, I was up a 
little late with the boys last evening. 

80 



Observations of a Retired Ueteran 

XII 



<|^bsertidttons of a IS^tiir^d ^^t^r^n 




OMEHOW the town presents to me a 
bereaved appearance. Since the ac5\ion of 
the authorities clearing the sidewalks, I 
seem to miss some of my best friends. 
The tenants of the pavement had become 
my companions, after a fashion, so familiar were 
they to me. The extravagant gentleman who 
stood in front of the clothing store, with his 
change of clothes every day and the fixed stare 
out of his rain-washed eyes, was one of my 
w^armest friends. He was no fair weather friend. 
The dusts of March, the showers of April, made 
no difference with him. He was there, always 
there, with his waterproof for the rain, his duster 
for the summer heat, and his sou-wester perched 
on his head when the Equinox set in. He had 
one of the most even dispositions I ever knew 
and always regarded me with the same mild, 
far-off look, whatever uniform or decoration he 
^vore. He was the same w^ith a blue jumper and 
overalls as he was with a diagonal suit with 
*'This style $25" flying from the button-hole. 
There was a great gap the morning he disap- 
peared. The deserted street looked like a Sunday 
or a funeral or some other occasion of unusual 
sadness. I went in one day to inquire about him. 
I didn't have far to go ; he had been tumbled into 
a corner w^ith empty collar boxes, a broken coal 
scuttle, and some fire kindling. He appeared 
deeply mortified. ** This is a strange fix you find 
me in, Mr. Boyzy," he said as he struggled to sit 
endwise on the bottom of the coal scuttle, " and 
it is a strange world we find both of ourselves 
in, sir. Great crimes are committed in the name 
of progress, sir, very great, and this is one of 
them. I have been a public man in this city for 
ten years, sir. I have guided the tastes of the 
public — few knew how to clothe themselves 
until I showed them, and few would buy their 
clothing until they had seen me. I have had 
men stand and discuss my clothes for hours, 
making up their minds about the spring fashions. 

82 



O^bsertiations of a Hettr^i mtttvan 



These city authorities little know what they are 
doing. But what do they care ? Look at their 
clothes and tell me how many of them fit. What 
is it to them that a public man and benefa<5tor 
lies here in a pile of collar boxes ? They say that 
the old ideas that admitted of my standing on 
the sidewalk are done away with, and that this 
is an age of progress. What sort of progress is 
this, that takes a man who has been prominent 
before the people for years and dumps him into 
a dustpile ? Look at me ! I have never lacked 
backbone. Why, I am all backbone. [ He had a 
backbone of iron ]. No man ever knew me to get 
out of the way of a crowd or go with it. I have 
been a consistent public man with a backbone 
for ten years and here I am in a dust- pile ! " 
Here the coal scuttle slipped and my old friend 
tumbled into the collar boxes with a groan. As 
I left him I could not help thinking how many 
public men all consistency and backbone have 
made similar reputations with my dummy friend 
by never going with or getting out of the way of 
the crowd, and ended by being tumbled into the 
dust-bin just for the lack of a little wisdom. 
Alas, how like my dethroned friend we all are, 
in the respe<5\ of clamoring about our opinions 
and wrongs long after the public has forgotten 
both them and us. 



€L**This is a pretty condition for me to be in 
now, isn't it? " asked another old friend of mine 
that I went to look after. " Why, don't you re- 
member me ? I'm the fish that always used to 
be at the door as you went by." It was true, I 
could hardly remember him. He used to lie in 
state on a board on the sidewalk on hot days, 
half covered with ice, and his scales looking as 
bright as silver. Some mornings, I am afraid I 
used to catch a faint whiff of his breath, but of 
course this was not to be remembered against 
him in his great trouble now. His troubles had 

83 



If^bsemations of a B^tir^d Veteran 



greatly changed him. From the aristocratic 
exclusiveness of the ice-board he had been re- 
duced to being strung up by a string through his 
gills to a nail in the wall. The brightness of his 
scales was gone, and as far as rank went, he 
looked as ordinary as the bunch of humble hick- 
ory shad that hung near him. *' W^hat do you 
think of this way of treating a fish that has come 
three hundred miles from the coast to help you 
out in Lent ? What sort of infidel authorities has 
this city got, to string up the friend of repent- 
ance and reform in this sort of way ? Why, such 
a town as this ought to have nothing but her- 
rings to keep Lent with, and they ought to be 
salt." It was no use trying to comfort my noble 
friend, but I could not help thinking that, fish 
that he w^as, he was human in finding his great 
trouble not so much in being strung up now^, as 
in having seen better days and more distincftion. 
And very human he was, too, in taking the ill- 
treatment of himself as an offence against Lent. 
We are so prone to take a grievance direcS^ed 
against ourselves as an affront to our politics, 
our church, or something else to which we bear 
about the same relation that a fish does to Lent. 



CThe mature young woman who stood in front 
of the millinery store, and "whom I have seen 
ivear six different overcoats of various styles in 
one day, ^vas among the vi<5tims of the new law. 
Her figure was one of the few that may correcSt- 
ly be termed wiry, but it was perfe(5\. I may 
say that I have never seen a waist so slender, or 
a bust more perfec5^. But all of us have our 
defe(5ts ; she had hers. In a fearful wind one 
day I made the discovery by her being blown 
over. She had no feet ! I don't think she was 
the same woman after that terrible day, nor do 
I remember that the nose, that was turned awry 
by the fall, was ever straightened. W^hen I spoke 
to her of the new law and her removal to a 

84 



#b$^tti^tion$ of a B^tirei ISijteiratt 



stand near the counter, she said it was a good 
thing. ** No woman of proper feeling," she said 
with some asperity, ** would have borne it as 
long as I did. I never wanted to stand there and 
be gazed at by men, it looked so bold. As for 
those women of brass that like it, it is all very 
v^ell, but I couldn't stand it. Admiration can 
never compensate a right-minded woman for 
the staring of men. A woman must be very 
bold indeed to enjoy it. I like this retired corner 
much better than out on the walk. It has a 
home feeling about it, and the domestic sphere 
is always a true woman's choice." It was borne 
in upon me somehow, as I listened to her, that 
a woman with a broken nose and no feet will 
always think the woman with a pretty nose and 
two feet bold. There is a good deal in this say- 
ing if you \vill only ponder over it. Ponder it. 

n o a 

Cignominiously stowed away in a back yard I 
saw^ an old friend that always brought many re- 
flecftions to my mind when exhibited on the 
sidewalk — a coop of chickens. The most 
humiliated of all my old acquaintances — a 
dominiquer rooster — had his head up through 
the slats to explain the situation. ** Here's a 
pretty howdy do ! " he remarked. **What sort 
of treatment is this ? I can't see anything here 
except old whiskey barrels and clothes lines and 
dry goods boxes. I can hardly tell when it is 
daybreak in this miserable old yard. Why, this 
morning I commenced crowing two hours too 
soon, and a Chinaman over there raised the 
window and fired a tin can at my head. I can't 
attend to my business in a place like this ; there 
is another rooster around the corner been crow- 
ing all day and I can't get at him. Look you, 
I'm no common rooster ; I'm no chicken just 
raised for the Town Authorities to eat ; I'm a 
warrior. Just look at these legs and these 
spurs — ." And just as my friend was struggling 

85 



^bs^rnations of a Betiired Veteran 



to get his foot up through the slats, a wash- 
woman in the second story emptied her soap- 
suds over the coop. He disappeared under the 
shower, amid the wild screaming of the hens. 
A moment later a bedraggled head, w^ith one eye 
closed by suds, looked out through the side bars 
and remarked in a saddened voice — **I suppose 
the city authorities would be satisfied now — if 
they could see this." The sudden change in my 
old friend from a warrior to a bundle of wet 
feathers shocked me into graver thoughts. 
C Somehow, I have never seen a coop of chick- 
ens in all its glory on the sidewalk, that I did 
not think of the French Revolution and the 
Bastile. You have seen the pic5\ure — I cannot 
think of the painter's name now — of the mem- 
bers of the old regime in the prison amusing 
themselves, not knowing whose name was to be 
called next for the guillotine ? To me there is a 
miniature human world in a chicken coop. All 
under sentence of death, and all eating and 
drinking, and clucking and crowing as if they 
were going to last forever. All scrambling and 
fighting over the grains of daily corn, even 
though the hand of the fatal purchaser is 
already descending into the mouth of the coop. 
Like their human brethren who do not wear 
feathers, the tallest and the strongest gets his 
head up through the slats and gets w^ider view^s 
of the world. He often mistakes the single 
street he can see for the Universe and crows 
out his discovery until he is picked out of the 
coop and hurried off to lose his head, an opera- 
tion which teaches him that in fac5\ he has dis- 
covered nothing. How^ like his brother, man ! 
All his speculations, all his telescopic philoso- 
phies, all his discoveries, find plausible support 
until he stumbles on an open grave. There, man 
and chickens are dumb, Somehow, those who 
write and talk about the future never impress 
me so much with how much they know, as with 
how little. How absolutely nothing they can 

86 



<9bseradt!ons of a Betir^ft la^teran 



tell. How echoless is the Awful Silence into 
which they toss their petty pebbles of theories 
and hopes and speculations. It seems to me 
that if it were not for that sensitive disc, the 
Conscience, which conveys to us the 'still 
small voice,' from a country far beyond the 
reach of our petty theories, the Silence that en- 
velops this planet would be intolerable. It is 
unbroken even by the second great event of 
Life — Death. It must be a strange sight view- 
ed from elsewhere — this terrestrial chicken 
coop of ours, so small that if each of its inhabi- 
tants were to touch hands they would make a 
ring around it, sailing through the unbroken 
silence of Space. A thin crust over a molten 
centre whirling at a thousand miles an hour. A 
collision, a jar, just enough to move it out of its 
orbit would wreck it — its surface covered with 
ignorant human chickens, knowing neither 
where they came from nor where they are going 
to, scratching, fighting, crowing, clucking, 
smoothing their feathers in vanity, and cocking 
their telescopes at the firmament in hungry 
curiosity ! It is a sight that must make the 
Angels weep. 




87 



Obserpations of a Retired Ueteran 

XIII 



lObseimations of a Betireft ^^t^tran 




H, here you are again ! What ; you don*t 
remember me ? Why, I remember you. 
It was last Christmas, don't you kno-w, 
in this store ? You were buying a 
mustache-cup — there now, don't blush; 
perhaps it was slippers, or a smoking-cap. Any- 
how, it was for him. Ah ; so you do remember 
me. But why do you call him Mr. Smith, now? 
It was Jack, then. You never regarded him as 
anything but a friend ? Of course not ; but, my 
dear, when young people begin to look upon 
each other as friends — you see I accent it right 
— it is very apt to be the overture to a very diffi- 
cult opera which is as likely to end with the 
curtain descending to the strains of slow music 
as any other way. I like to see the young inter- 
changing gifts at holiday times, but I might be 
allowed to suggest, as the result of the observa- 
tion of an old man, be careful of what you ^vrite 
in sending them. You have seen pic5tures of 
Cupid — so healthful, so chubby and rosy, and 
such promise of long life. It is a mistake ; I 
know of no greater invalid — none of the gods 
whose health is so frail. I have known a cold 
word to give him a fatal chill. I have seen him 
fly, never to return, from a mere scent — a ciga- 
rette breath. I have known him taken incurably 
ill at the bad fit of a Jersey or the set of an over- 
coat. And I have seen him lie down and die 
without a ^vord and nobody ever knew the reas- 
on why ; even if he knew it himself, which I 
very much doubt. So, you see, it will be a 
very wise precaution in dealing with such an 
uncertain god to be prepared for everything. 
And one preparation is to be careful of what you 
put on paper. Many a young girl and many a 
young man, in an effort to write their little 
notes, sending or receiving holiday presents, 
often overstep the mark in trying to strike the 
proper elevated key. Don't abound in literary 
gush, no matter what are your sentiments in 
giving or receiving ; if you write at all, write a 

90 



^bs^rttations of ^ ©^tirei IBet^ir^n 



plain, brief, dignified note which you can read 
five years after with perfecSt satisfacStion. Notes 
are often misunderstood, sometimes we don't 
exacftly understand ourselves when we write 
them, and so it is always safer to be on the con- 
servative side. It will often save a good deal of 
vain regret and many wishes to goodness that 
you had taken this advice. 



€L And you here too ! Going to surprise your 
husband w^ith a present again ? A copy of the 
Revised Version this time ? Ah, that will give 
him a chance to give you a surprise next Christ- 
mas — by reading it. Ah, you should know Mrs. 
Boyzy, if you wish to know how to please your 
husband at Christmas. For now thirty years 
that estimable woman has opened her annual 
Christmas campaign on me as early as the month 
of Oc5\ober. With afFe<5tionate strategy I am 
lured into book stores, and variety stores, and 
china stores— last year she tolled me into a drug 
store — to discover by artful references to this 
thing and that, what I fancy. Now, as a matter 
of facft, having her, I fancy nothing else (I take 
it that the newest married man could get off 
nothing prettier than that), but I have become 
so used to the campaign, and also so unprinci- 
pled in my advices to shorten it, that I profess 
the liveliest admiration over about the second 
thing we come to. The result is that I often get 
presents of a novel charac5ter. Last year I got a 
hand-painted coal scuttle, and but a couple of 
Christmases before that, I had gotten a gaudily 
framed pi<5\ure of some retired saint, who had 
been martyred and for all I know^ deservedly so. 
But the fashion of drug stores keeping holiday 
presents, once came near exposing my whole 
plan of self defence. My intense admiration of 
a handsomely ornamented cut glass bottle of 
Unfailing Lotion for Neuralgia, which I thought 
she was pointing out — when in fa(5^ she was 

91 



^bs^mations af i^ B^tired ^^t^tan 



trying to make me see a gorgeous dressing case 
— excited a suspicion even in her unsuspe<5\ing 
mind. But if I jest about this matter, it is not 
that I underestimate the sweetness of the prac- 
tice of married people remembering each other at 
Christmas. I am not so sure that of all other 
gifts — not even excepting those to children — 
these are not the most disinterested and spring 
from the truest affe<5\tion. It is no easy feat to 
have lived with a man for ten, fifteen, twenty 
years ; to know his weakness thoroughly ; to 
measure the wide distance from the heroic stat- 
ure for which we took him, and the size into 
which thorough knowledge shrinks him ; to have 
borne with all his eccentricities, his fault finding, 
his natural selHshness ; to have discovered and 
to have known for years that he is after all like 
the rest of us only human, and yet at every re- 
curring Christmas to send our affed\ions back to 
the beginning and with a fresh and unimpaired 
love give him the mystic password of our hearts 
in a gift. If I sometimes laugh at the devices 
of my wife to find out what it is I want, I do not 
have the faintest smile at the patient and loving 
heart that inspires them. I do not know that I 
ever saw an angel, but, though her hair is tinged 
with gray, and youth has long since left her face, 
I never hear my wife, with her bright smile on 
Christmas morning, asking the old, girlish ques- 
tion, ** What do you think I've got for you," that 
I don't see in it that sort of absolution for the 
past and benedi(5lion for the future which it is 
said only angels bring. 



€L Ah, I expcd^ed to see you here ! I knew you 
would come ! Why ? Ah, my boy, every vet- 
eran knows well what comes after picket firing. 
Let me see : at church with her, concerts, soirees 
— where else could you be to-day but in here 
buying a present ? Why, you bought her that 
last Christmas ! Oh, I see, this Christmas it is 

93 



<!^ti$eirxi^ttons of a H^tir^i ^et^ri^it 



for another girl ! Come now, don't look con- 
scious over it. The girls can't help it ; they will 
change now and then, It is not their fault, but 
still it will happen. My boy, the business you 
are now in has by no means been reduced to a 
fixed science. No calculation yet made has re- 
duced to a certainty any way of holding a girl 
after you think you have her. There is a good 
deal of money in store for the man that makes 

it — when he does. But she seemed . There 

now, I know all about it ; but you musn't hold a 
girl rigidly to what you think she seems. When 
you get to be as old as I am, you will know that 
girls have a hard, hard time of it. Custom won't 
allow them to do anything but seem. It doesn't 
allow them to tell a man that they like him, and, 
still worse, it doesn't allow them to tell him 
that they don't like him. You did go there, you 
know, pretty nearly all last year, didn't you ? 
What could she do ? Set the dogs on you ? That 
would have been unmistakable, but in her set 
that isn't allowable. Be rude to you ? She is a 
lady, how could she be rude ? She shouldn't 

have accepted . There now, be fair about 

this thing. How could she help accepting your 
attentions, your bonbons, your sleigh rides, 
your — well, your boring generally, if you will 
have it — without being rude? There isn't, un- 
der our social rules, a more defenceless creature 
on earth than an attra<5live girl in society, from 
attentions that are wearisome and unwelcome. 
Nor, if she maintains the self-respe<5\ing rules 
that society has laid do'wn for her, is there a 
more helpless creature in obtaining what she 
wants. You often hear it flippantly said, that 
if a girl loves a man she can always let him 
know it. There never was a greater mistake. 
On the contrary, the poor young things, when 
they find it out, so far from being able to let the 
young fellow know it, commence a fearful strug- 
gle to keep him from knowing it. I suppose it 
is, so to speak, constitutional with them, and 

93 



<|^b$$mdtion$ of a SS^tired ^^t^ir^n 



they can't help it. I have seen a gentle, well- 
bred young girl in such agonized fear of discovery 
that she rudely repulsed the common advances 
of politeness on the part of the objecft. Women 
lose their heads on the subje(5\ of love, as often, 
I sometimes think, as their hearts. 

Q O O 

tl^Why, you are only buying one little wagon 
this year ; I thought I saw you buying two 
last Christmas ; one of the little ones has out- 
grown it, I reckon ? What, dead ! I beg your 
pardon. It was thoughtless of me. Dead ! Then 
he has outgrown it. Outgrown it all —sickness, 
pain, disappointments, a long, weary life — all at 
a single leap. But this does not comfort you. 
Ah, no ; nothing comforts us for those we have 
seen slip into the dark. It will be but human in 
you to miss him this Christmas, and to think of 
the hundred ways in which he would have had 
pleasure if he had only lived. I think that in the 
death of children there is an added grief to that 
we feel when men and women die. They are 
so little, so helpless, one cannot help feeling 
anxious about how they will get along in the 
new "world they have gone to ; who will take 
care of them, and whether they will be neglecS^ed. 
When the time comes for putting the children 
to bed in the evening, we cannot help thinking 
about the little one who has gone from life, and 
wondering as we sit by the firelight whether 
there is any one taking care of it. W^e can't 
help feeling sure that it wants to be with its 
mother ; it always used to when night came on. 
It always climbed into her lap when dark came 
and it surely ^vants to be back to-night. It 
cannot be happy, for it is among strangers, and 
if it is unhappy, there is but one place for it, its 
home, and but one bosom on which to lay its 
head, its mother's. And so our human heart 
talks on in its hot grief. It is a great comfort to 
remember, after awhile, that there is a Father 

94 



<ldti$^rtiatlon$ of ^ Retired ^^teran 



who watches over it as tenderly as he has 
watched over all his children, and who will guide 
the little one into a new and higher life, as He 
will us older children who come to Him later in 
life, like tired and weary children seeking a 
mother's breast. 



C And so you didn't know what a castle in Spain 
was ? Why, you have lived in one. In one ! 
you have lived in a hundred, and if you were 
older you would have lived in a thousand. Why, 
everybody lives in castles in Spain sometimes. 
Let me see how to tell you about it. You know 
your elder sister that young Pettengill comes to 
see so often, and whom you hate so because you 
have to go to bed early? Well, your sister lives 
in a castle in Spain. She has had it papered and 
painted, and moved to another street to be near 
her dearest girl friend so as to make visiting con- 
venient, and she has had the front yard fixed 
with flowers, particularly those he likes, and 
has had a door-plate put on the castle door v^ith 
a name on it, Clarence Pettengill, in large 
letters. I remember when your father married 
your mother forty years ago, that she lived in 
a castle in Spain, and to her eyes your father 
was clad in shining armor and 'wore long plumes 
in his hat, and to those same eyes was a Hero of 
high degree. Why, even the old gentleman who 
is writing this to you, has lived in those castles, 
and as he looks back at them now with their 
bare walls and broken windows and tumbled 
down appearance generally, he often wonders 
how he came to build them. Some times, more 
especially at Christmas time, he gets on an old, 
and now uncertain steed called Memory, and 
rides back to all the castles he has lived in. So 
beautiful when he built them, so brightly painted 
by Hope and Pride and Ambition and all the 
other celebrated artists of that day ; now so 
dingy and wrecked that you would hardly know 

95 



®b$0riiatton$ of d l^etir^d la^t^ran 



them, and some clear faded out of sight. The 
castle, little one, that you are no^v living in has 
over the front door in big letters CHRISTMAS, 
and from its window you see such lots of fun 
that you will never have, such lots of presents 
that you will never get, and such a lot of imag- 
ining that you will never see realized. After this 
week is over, you will take down the big sign 
over the door, close the blinds, and stand watch- 
ing with grieved heart while your castle fades 
into the air. There is nothing on earth, as you 
will see when you are old, that is not something 
like these castles in Spain, and but One Thing, 
that is not tainted with their evanescent life. 
God grant, little one, that at the end of our lives, 
you and I may have clung to that one thing, and 
that we may have so lived that the many man- 
sions of our Father in a fairer world may not be 
for us — castles in Spain. 



FINIS, 



96 



( Envoy ) 

For a Soldier 

( Henry C. Tinsley, Died Auguil 2 1 , 1 902 ) 

Not 'mid the din of battle long ago, 

But in the lingering clutch of later pain 

Death found him, whom we shall not see again 

Lifting a fearless front to every foe. 

Yet shall suns somewhere shine for him, and blow 
The lilies and the roses without stain, 
Who through the lengthened years in heart and brain 

Knew most of storm and winter with its snow. 

For it is written in the starry sky, — 

In the vast spaces and the silences, — 

That God's eternal universe is his 
Who fears not, though he live or if he die. 

— A soldier to the dauntless end was he, 

As riding with his red artillery. 

Armistead c. Gordon. 



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